Dr Lucie Büchi is an agroecosystem ecologist whose research examines how ecological processes and farmer knowledge can support resilient, multifunctional and equitable agricultural systems.

She trained in population biology and genetics and completed a PhD in theoretical community ecology at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Her early research investigated how dispersal, environmental variation and species strategies shape the structure and functioning of ecological communities. She subsequently worked for seven years at Agroscope, the Swiss centre of excellence for agricultural research, where she applied ecological approaches to cropping systems. Her research there examined cover crops, reduced tillage, crop diversification, nutrient cycling, soil fertility, weed management and agri-environmental indicators.

Lucie joined the Natural Resources Institute in 2018. Her work now integrates ecological and evolutionary science, quantitative analysis, greenhouse and on-farm research, and participatory approaches. She works across temperate and tropical agricultural systems, collaborating with farmers, agricultural organisations and researchers from the natural and social sciences.

Her research seeks to understand not only whether agricultural practices work, but also where, why and for whom they work. A particular focus is the synergies, trade-offs and unintended consequences that arise when agricultural systems are expected to support food production, soil health, biodiversity, climate resilience and farmer livelihoods simultaneously.

Dr Lucie Büchi’s research is organised around three interconnected themes:

Resilient agroecosystems under environmental change

This theme examines how agricultural systems respond and adapt to climatic, environmental and biological change. Lucie is interested in the processes that shape the stability and resilience of agricultural production, including crop and plant diversity, soil and crop management, climate adaptation, and the emergence and spread of weeds, pests and diseases.

Ecological processes and agroecosystem multifunctionality

This theme investigates how biodiversity and ecological interactions can contribute to productive and sustainable farming systems. Lucie studies the effects of crop diversification, cover crops, soil management on multiple outcomes, including crop production, soil health, carbon storage, nutrient cycling, biodiversity, and the regulation of weeds and crop diseases.

A particular interest is the multiple roles of non-crop plants in agricultural systems. These plants may provide ecosystem services, for example by protecting soils, supporting biodiversity and cycling nutrients, but they may also compete with crops, harbour pathogens or evolve into agricultural weeds. Her research investigates the conditions under which these benefits, risks and trade-offs arise.

Participatory and equitable agricultural transformation

This theme explores how farmers, researchers and other stakeholders can co-produce knowledge and develop locally relevant pathways towards more sustainable agriculture. Lucie works with social scientists on participatory research, farmer-led monitoring and experimentation, and the relationships between gender, social inequalities and soil health.

She is particularly interested in how farmers define and assess soil health and agricultural sustainability, how different forms of knowledge can be combined, and how the benefits and burdens of agricultural transitions are distributed among people and communities.

Research approaches

Across these themes, Lucie combines:

• on-farm research and farmer-managed experiments;
• greenhouse and controlled-environment studies;
• ecological and agricultural modelling;
• statistical analysis and evidence synthesis;
• plant functional traits and eco-evolutionary approaches;
• participatory monitoring and knowledge co-production;
• interdisciplinary collaboration across natural and social sciences.

Her overall aim is to contribute to agricultural systems that can produce food while supporting healthy soils, biodiversity, climate resilience and equitable outcomes for farming communities.

2024-2025 ‘Empowering farmers: a participatory approach to soil organic carbon assessment’

Funded by the AFN+ network (UKRI)

Website: https://www.agrifood4netzero.net/funding/funded-projects/funded-scoping-study-projects/empowering-farmers-a-participatory-approach-to-soil-organic-carbon-assessment/

Soils are key to sustain food production. An important component of soils is organic matter, which contributes to soil fertility and crop growth, and consists of about 58% carbon. This soil organic carbon also helps to fight climate change, as the more carbon is in the soil, the less in the atmosphere contributing to greenhouse effect and global warming. The primary objective of this project is to empower farmers to estimate the level of soil organic carbon content in their fields, through the assessment of soil colour. This easy and accessible method will be validated against laboratory assessment, which is usually more costly and time consuming. The project aims to develop a new, accessible method and will contribute to raising awareness on soil health and carbon sequestration that can be used to adapt farm management practices towards net zero targets.

2023-2024 ‘Discovering the traits underlying emergence of weed populations in the annual grass Vulpia myuros’

Funded by the Royal Society

Weeds represent a major pressure on food production worldwide, by decreasing yields and contaminating harvests. It is thus crucial to study weed ecology to better understand how to control them now and in the future. In particular, the question of which traits (i.e. characteristics) favour the invasion and growth of new weeds into arable fields is key to understand how weediness emerges. In this project, we addressed the question of the traits underlying weed emergence in the grass species Vulpia myuros, also called rattail fescue. This species originates from the Mediterranean region and has been naturally present in Europe for centuries. However, V. myuros has emerged as a weed in recent years, benefiting from changes in cropping practices, in particular the reduction of tillage intensity. This species thus offers a unique opportunity to study the early stage of its invasion of arable fields. The traits characterising weediness in V. myuros will be studied by phenotyping wild and weed populations, i.e. we will measure important traits along the life cycle of the plant, from germination to flowering and seed production. The phenotyping of these populations in a growth chamber and greenhouse set up will reveal the similarities and differences in important traits among wild and weed populations and identify traits that are important to explain weediness. This project will shed new light on the traits underlying weed emergence in a species that may pose problems for food production in the future, and provide insights for improved control methods.

2022-2024 ‘Increasing productivity and sustainability in UK viticulture’

Funded by Innovate-UK’s Farming Innovation Programme, led by NIAB-EMR and Gusbourne vineyard, in collaboration with Chapel Down vineyard, Vinescapes and T Denne & Sons

Website: https://www.vinescapes.com/i-uk-cover-crop-research-project/

The proposed project will bring innovation by quantifying, for the first time, the impact of cover crops and non-chemical weeding strategies on soil health, production efficiency, and juice quality in UK vineyards. Project outputs will include evidence-based recommendations for growers on the best ground management approaches to suit UK vineyards. Industry-wide uptake of these practices would demonstrate to the public, the horticultural sector and retailers that the viti industry is committed to achieving environmental and net-zero goals. We propose to carry out the first full-scale experiments and commercial trials of cover cropping and mechanical weeding strategies in UK vineyards to identify and tailor optimal soil management approaches for the UK industry. The trial sites will serve as long-term research facilities on commercial holdings in Kent, and our intention is that they host separate but allied future research on beneficial insects and soil pathogens. We intend to commercialise project outputs through an existing route.

2019-2021 ‘Landscape scale genomic-environment diversity data to model existing and novel agri-systems under climate change to enhance food security in Ethiopia’

Funded by BBSRC GCRF, in collaboration with the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Queen Mary University London and Addis Abeba University

Goal: We propose to perform a high-resolution multi-functional genomic and environmental characterization of Ethiopian highland agri-systems, focusing on Enset and ten regionally and globally important crops that together comprise a range of complementary cropping agri-systems in the Southern Ethiopian highlands, seeking to enhance their role in future resource provision, and generating clear economic and social impact on the livelihoods they support.

2019-2021 ‘Socioeconomic and environmental sustainability of coffee agroforestry’ (SEACAF)

Funded by BBSRC GCRF, in collaboration with CATIE (Costa Rica) and Universidad del Valle (Guatemala)

Goals: 1. Identify and assess trade-offs between intensification (maximising productivity and profits) and sustainability (provision of ecosystem services, climate and market resilience) in coffee monocultures and agroforestry systems

2. How to meet growing demand for agricultural products and sustain livelihoods of farmers, in a context of climate change and market variation, while maintaining ecosystem services that are required for production and society as a whole

Module leader for Applied Plant Ecology and Introduction to Ecological Modelling and Programming

• Module leader for Applied Plant Ecology

• *Walder, F., *Büchi, L., Wagg, C., Colombi, T., Banerjee, S., Hirte, J., Mayer, J., Six, J., Keller, T., Charles, R., van der Heijden, M., 2023. Synergism between production and soil health through crop diversification, organic amendments and crop protection in wheat-based systems. Journal of Applied Ecology 60, 2091-2104, doi: 10.1111/1365-2664.14484
• Morrow, N., Borrell, J.S., Mock, N.B., Büchi, L., Gatto, A., Lulekal, E., 2023. Measure of indigenous perennial staple crop, Ensete ventricosum, associated with positive food security outcomes in southern Ethiopian Highlands. Food Policy, 102451, doi: 10.1016/j.foodpol.2023.102451
• Chase, R.R., Büchi, L., Rodenburg, J, Roux, N., Wendawek, A., Borrell, J.S., 2022. Smallholder farmers expand production area of the perennial crop enset as a climate coping strategy in a drought-prone indigenous agrisystem. Plants, People, Planet 5, 254-266, doi: 10.1002/ppp3.10339
• Büchi, L., Walder, F., Banerjee, S., Colombi, T., van der Heijden, M., Keller, T., Charles, R., Six, J.,2022. Pedoclimatic factors and management determine soil organic carbon and aggregation in farmer fields at a regional scale. Geoderma 409, 115632, doi: 10.1016/j.geoderma.2021.115632
• Mwangangi, I.M., Büchi, L., Haefele, S.M., Bastiaans, L., Runo, S., Rodenburg, J., 2021. Combining host plant defence with targeted nutrition: key to durable control of hemi-parasitic Striga spp. in cereals in sub-Saharan Africa? New Phytologist 230, 2164-2178, doi: 10.1111/nph.17271
• Riedo, J., Wettstein, F.E., Rösch, A., Herzog, C., Banerjee, S., Büchi, L., Charles, R., Wächter, D., Martin-Laurent, F., Bucheli, T.D., Walder, F., van der Heijden, M., 2021. Widespread occurrence of pesticides in organically managed soils: the ghost of a conventional agricultural past? Environmental Science & Technology 55, 2919−2928, doi: 10.1021/acs.est.0c06405
• Büchi, L., Cordeau, S., Hull, R., Rodenburg, J., 2021. Vulpia myuros, an increasing threat for agriculture. Weed Research 61, 13-24, doi: 10.1111/wre.12456
• Rodenburg, J., Büchi, L., Haggar, J., 2020. Adoption by adaptation: moving from Conservation Agriculture to conservation practices. International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability 19, 437-455, doi: 10.1080/14735903.2020.1785734
• Büchi, L., Wendling, M., Amossé, C., Jeangros, B., Charles, R., 2020. Cover crops to secure weed control strategies in a maize crop with reduced tillage. Field Crops Research 247, 107583, doi: 10.1016/j.fcr.2019.107583
• Büchi, L., Georges, F., Walder, F., Banerjee, S., Keller, T., Six, J., van der Heijden, M., Charles, R., 2019. Potential of indicators to unveil the hidden side of cropping system classification: Differences and similarities in cropping practices between conventional, no-till and organic systems. European Journal of Agronomy 109, 125920, doi: 10.1016/j.eja.2019.125920
• Wendling, M., Charles, R., Herrera, J.M., Amossé, C., Jeangros, B., Walter, A., Büchi, L., 2019. Effect of species identity and diversity on biomass production and its stability in cover crop mixtures. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 281, 81-91, doi: 10.1016/j.agee.2019.04.032
• Banerjee, S., Walder, F., Büchi, L., Meyer, M., Held, A.Y., Gattinger, A., Keller, T., Charles, R., van der Heijden, M., 2019. Agricultural intensification reduces microbial network complexity and the abundance of keystone taxa in roots. The ISME Journal 13, 1722–1736, doi: 10.1038/s41396-019-0383-2
• Büchi, L., Wendling, M., Amossé, C., Necpalova, M., Charles, R., 2018. Importance of cover crops in alleviating negative effects of reduced soil tillage and promoting soil fertility in a winter wheat cropping system. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 256, 92-104, doi: 10.1016/j.agee.2018.01.005
• Büchi, L., Wendling, M., Amossé, C., Jeangros, B., Sinaj, S., Charles, R., 2017. Long and short term changes in crop yield and soil properties induced by the reduction of soil tillage in a long term field experiment in Switzerland. Soil and Tillage Research 174, 120-129, doi: 10.1016/j.still.2017.07.002
• Wendling, M., Büchi, L., Amossé, C., Jeangros, B., Walter, A., Charles, R., 2017. Specific interactions leading to transgressive overyielding in cover crop mixtures. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 241, 88-99, doi: 10.1016/j.agee.2017.03.003
• Wendling, M., Büchi, L., Amossé, C., Sinaj, S., Walter, A., Charles, R,. 2016. Influence of root and leaf traits on nutrient uptake of cover crops. Plant and Soil 409, 419-434, doi: 10.1007/s11104-016-2974-2
• Büchi, L., Valsangiacomo, A., Burel, E., Charles, R., 2016. Integrating simulation data from a crop model in the development of an agri-environmental indicator for soil cover in Switzerland. European Journal of Agronomy 76, 149-159, doi: 10.1016/j.eja.2015.11.004
• Büchi, L., Vuilleumier, S., 2016. Ecological strategies in stable and disturbed environments depend on species specialisation. Oikos 125, 1408-1420, doi: 10.1111/oik.02915
• Büchi, L., Gebhard, C.-A., Liebisch, F., Sinaj, S., Ramseier, H., Charles, R., 2015. Accumulation of biologically fixed nitrogen by legumes cultivated as cover crops in Switzerland. Plant and Soil 393, 163-175, doi: 10.1007/s11104-015-2476-7
• Büchi, L., Vuilleumier, S., 2014. Coexistence of specialist and generalist species is shaped by dispersal and environmental factors. The American Naturalist 183, 612-24, doi: 10.1086/675756
• Goudet, J., Büchi, L., 2006. The effects of dominance, regular inbreeding and sampling design on Q_ST, an estimator of population differentiation for quantitative traits. Genetics 172, 1337-1347, 10.1534/genetics.105.050583