Environmental impact of intensive versus semi-extensive apple orchards: use of a specific methodological framework for Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) in perennial crops

• The environmental impacts of intensive/semi-extensive orchards was analysed with LCA.
• The unproductive stages weighted from 9 to 28% of the orchard studied impacts.
• Nitrogen input was a key driver for the environmental impacts in intensive orchards.
• Over the orchard lifespan, the intensive orchard displayed the highest impacts.

While the management of apple orchards is intensifying through high tree density, heavy input use and short lifespan, growers in some traditional production areas keep on planting semi-extensive orchards. We assessed the environmental impacts of those two contrasted production systems using the last methodological recommendations for Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) in perennial crops. The use of such framework permitted to assess the weight of the unproductive stages in the orchard lifespan impacts, and the contribution of fertiliser direct field emissions to the total impacts.Mainly due to fertilisation, the intensive orchard displayed the higher environmental impacts over the orchard lifespan for all calculated impact categories except energy demand. Fertilisation, including fertiliser production and application, represented half or more of the calculated impact categories in the intensive orchard, attesting to the importance of taking these field emissions into account and to include the N-tree requirements in the calculation. Methodological considerations are discussed and the necessity to explicit the approach used to account for the duration of perennial cropping systems is also outlined. Unproductive stages weighted from 9 to 21% of the studied impact categories in the semi-extensive orchard and from 13 to 28% in the intensive orchard, with little contribution of the nursery stage (from 0.2 to 2.6%). This study outlines that orchard strategies (management and design) perform differently according to the context that constrains tree water need and pest and disease control.