The two-year project (2019-2021) involved the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), and Cirad research unit AIDA.

Conservation agriculture (CA) has been widely promoted as a sustainable farming practice delivering numerous ecosystem services, such as climate change mitigation. The climate benefit is usually based on soil organic carbon (SOC) and greenhouse gas (GHG) balance between CA and conventional agriculture. However, SOC stocks and GHG emissions (biogeochemical effects) are not enough to fully assess the effect of a practice on global warming. Farming practices such as tillage can alter the surface energy balance through a modification of different parameters such as the surface albedo, latent and sensible heat fluxes. Several authors have suggested that albedo change could increase or offset climate benefits of land management depending on the context.

The objective of the ACCURATE project is therefore to study the biogeophysical effects of mulch and no tillage practices, and to compare them to the biogeochemical effects in terms on SOC sequestration and GHGs emissions, in order to estimate the global radiative forcing and the net climate benefit of conservation agriculture. The study will also investigate the interaction between the cropping system and the soil type on albedo dynamics. It will be carried out on two long-term experiments on conservation agriculture managed by CIMMYT.