In January 2025 the SLU Centre of Biological Control, CBC, recruited two new junior researchers and Chloë is one of them. Chloë wants to contribute to sustainable crop production and to reverse the ongoing biodiversity crisis. Therefore, her research revolves around how we can diversify agroecosystems to promote diversity and insect-mediated ecological functions. In April 2025, Chloë will start her first own project, that is funded with a Formas career grant for early-career researchers for four years.
– I am assessing how the cropping system strip cropping affects insect and weed communities, as well as insect-mediated ecosystem services, in economically important crops in Sweden. The aim is to reduce the need for synthetic pesticides and fertilisers, says Chloë.
Adapting strips to existing machinery
Strip cropping involves growing different crops in strips that are wide enough for individual management using existing machinery. This might bypass the challenges faced by other forms of spatial crop diversity such as row-intercropping, while still narrow enough to get the benefits of enhanced weed and insect pest control. And thereby, a reduced reliance on pesticides.
– I will also identify different obstacles and opportunities of strip cropping by engaging with farmers and crop advisors. This is fundamental to develop strategies for strip cropping implementation at the farm scale. To do this I will work together with research groups at SLU in Alnarp, at Lund University and in Wageningen in the Netherlands.
From snail races to sustainability science in Australia
Chloë is born and raised in Switzerland, where she spent a lot of her free time in the garden and the nearby forest collecting insects and doing snail races with her best friend.
– After high school, I embarked on a journey to Australia to study both science and visual arts. For my Bachelor of Science, I studied zoology and sustainability science, and glass art at the Australian National University in Canberra. Being fascinated by the diversity of ants in Australia, I wrote my Master thesis on vision and navigation in nocturnal bull ants, says Chloë.
An interest in agroecology led to Switzerland and Sweden
During her undergraduate studies, Chloë was involved in a food cooperative and permaculture projects around Canberra.
– Being increasingly interested in agroecology, I decided to move back to Switzerland for a year to take the opportunity to do an internship at FiBL – the research institute of organic agriculture, and it is there that I first worked on biological insect pest control.
Specifically, Chloë was involved in projects developing biological control measures against pollen beetles in oilseed rape, the spotted wing drosophila in fruit orchards, and projects testing the effects of flower strips against insect pests in cabbage production and apple orchards. This internship paved the way to her PhD on the topic, and that brought Chloë to SLU in Uppsala, where she finished her PhD in 2021.
Agroecosystems from landscape to field scale
– For my PhD thesis, I investigated the effects of diversified agroecosystems at both the landscape and field scale, on insect communities, their foraging behaviour and the ecosystem services conservation biological control, insect pollination and crop yield in faba bean.
After a short postdoc in Germany, Chloë started a postdoc at SLU in Alnarp in 2023. There she is using a combination of landscape ecology, diversified cropping system designs, behavioural assays and analyses of plant volatile profiles to investigate multi-trophic interactions among oilseed rape plants, insect pests and their natural enemies. The aim is to reduce the reliance on insecticide in oilseed rape production systems. She is also researching integrated pest and pollinator management in faba bean.
– Now, I am really happy that I get the opportunity to continue exploring diversified agroecosystems to make crop production more biodiversity friendly and less reliant on pesticides, concludes Chloë.
