Management to Promote Flowering Understoreys Benefits Natural Enemy Diversity, Aphid Suppression and Income in an Agroforestry System

Agroforestry systems, where productive trees are integrated into agricultural land, can deliver benefits to biodiversity, natural pest control, and pollination, but the effects highly variable. Recent advances in our understanding of flower strips systems suggest that management tree row understorey could be an important contributor this variation. Here, we compare two cutting regimes for understorey, originally seeded with same mix, rows apple-arable agroforestry system: (i) uncut vegetation promote a flowering (ii) regularly mown vegetation. We recorded on invertebrate pests, enemies, pollinators, both apple arable components. Apple above understoreys supported significantly: more enemies early season, fewer aphid colonies, (iii) aphid-damaged fruits, (iv) higher pollinator visitation, compared those understoreys. In crop alleys, taxonomic richness Shannon diversity ground-based were significantly adjacent understoreys, season. Financial modelling based damage apples, mowing costs, income from Countryside Stewardship grants, indicated increased farm by GBP 231.02 per ha Our results provide first empirical evidence win-win option improve diversity, associated ecosystem services, income.