Capflor®: a tool for designing species mixtures and thus creating diversified grasslands

An agroecological alternative to high-artificial-input forage monocultures exists: the use of diversified grasslands (DGs). Created by sowing complex seed mixtures, DGs persist for more than 3 years and contain over 6 species/varieties from several plant families. Current DG planning methods are not very accessible to French farmers. Here, we describe a decision-making tool called Capflor (R) which we developed in collaboration with farmer collectives. It allows farmers to design species mixtures that are adapted to their needs. Capflor (R) incorporates current knowledge in ecology and the agricultural sciences and employs a filtering approach. It applies 3 successive filters to yield a final list of 6-14 species that can be used to generate a DG. The tool does not recommend specific species proportions, which will be location dependent.