Serious game: INTERPLAY

Cereal-legume intercrops are acknowledged as being one lever to improve the sustainability of agricultural production. However, they remain niche in Europe due to the numerous challenges to their introduction on farms. 

The UMR AGIR, in partnership with ITAB (the French Technical Institute for Organic Farming and Food), designed Interplay, a serious game aiming at exploring a large range of cereal-legume intercropping scenarios and at assessing eight ecosystem services they provide: cereal and legume yields, cereal protein content, nitrogen supply, impact on soil structure and weed, pests and diseases control.

Interplay is a pedagogical serious game, which aims at being used during participatory workshops with small groups of farmers (and their advisors) or students (with their teachers) to compare the levels of ecosystem services provided by diverse cereal-legume intercropping scenarios.

Interplay combines both material and computer-based components. The game board and cards support the design of a shared representation of an intercropping scenario, i.e. the context of the plot on which the intercrop will be grown, the objectives that the farmer wishes to reach thanks to the intercrop, the choice of the species to intercrop and their management options. The ecosystem services provided by each scenario are then assessed thanks to the computerized assessment model, and compared to the ecosystem services provided by the sole crop and to the farmer’s objectives. Players can adjust scenarios if necessary.

Interplay is the first serious game that support the design and implementation of cereal-legume intercrops. 
The computerized assessment model is for now calibrated for intercrops including cereals and grain legumes sown and harvested simultaneously in France. It could be adapted to consider other countries or intercrops with moderate efforts.

Contact : Clémentine Meunier / Guillaume Martin