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In the last few decades, characterized by intense environmental, landscape and socio-economic-financial changes, unexpected issues concerning the primary sector are arising and require researchers an urgent and deep reformulation of both the conceptual and technological tools used in the applied research. The concept of innovation is now radically changed, starting from a prevailing formula of linear top-down technology transfer, which has characterized the green revolution of the 1960s, to the nowadays approach that is characterized by the innovation of a complex system, and it is aimed at creating sustainable and shared opportunities through economic and institutional development. Those who now work in public or private bodies oriented to research for innovation are struggling to maintain their specific study area, but within integrated schemes where technical and scientific aspects are in interaction with organizational, institutional and political issues. Innovation can tackle several issues: new products, new technologies, new markets, new procedures (institutions) and new policies. The series of scientific and conceptual tools framed into the Agro-ecology domain seems appropriate to plan development initiatives of which the primary objective is ensuring a sustainable management of all the resources involved in agricultural production processes, while promoting food security and sovereignty, as well as protecting the rural landscape. By studying a target agroecosystem it is possible to identify and characterize the relationships between both the internal components and the system structures and functions at different levels of complexity of plot, farm and country, without neglecting the interactions among scientific, technological and socio-economic factors, and ultimately tending towards a science aimed at conflict resolution. Given the challenges that agricultural development is going to face in the next decades, it is indeed essential to support the planning and implementation of sound agro-ecological policies through an appropriate set of advanced tools. Particularly, a key aspect to empower all the stakeholders involved in the research, development, dissemination and application of new methods and technologies is the identification of information and communication systems that farmers and policy makers need in order to cope with fast-changing conditions in a complex system. University and research centers can act as institutional facilitators of dialogue and development policies among different stakeholders, catalyzing participation and promoting participatory problem-solving strategies for agricultural development and cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Participatory research generated new knowledge about complex organic cropping systems. • A methodology was proposed to integrate into the research the farmers' knowledge. • The adaptive management strategies are based on three main functional principles. • The organic rice yields were analysed and the related variability sources recognized. • There is an ensemble of possible cropping systems with a wide range of performance. Rice is the third grown crop worldwide and responsible of significant environmental impacts. Nevertheless, there is a lack of knowledge concerning the organic rice' performance and management, probably due to the limits encountered by the reductionist approach in studying complex systems such as an organic paddy. The study proposes a knowledge-intensive and qualitative research methodology based on researcher-farmer participatory approach, with the aim to improve the state of knowledge on organic rice, explore the yield potential and variability, and identify the successful agronomic practices. A wide range of cropping systems placed in North Italy were monitored and analysed during three years by a multi-actor network. Knowledge was generated from collected data and information, integrating the scientific and empirical knowledge on the basis of the DIKW hierarchy and through mutual learning and knowledge sharing tools. The organic rice field proved to be a complex and difficult to predict system, which evolves over the time, under the on-going pressure of the bottom-up innovations, and whose performance depends on many interacting elements. The results highlighted three main knowledge-intensive management strategies, not involving universal recipes but a range of agroecological principles and flexible solutions that the farmers adapt to the time- and space- variability through an active adaptive management. Yield showed a wide variability (0–7 t/ha) and normal distribution (median 4 t/ha). The lower, middle and upper quartiles of yield showed a mean of about 2, 4 and 6 t/ha, respectively, with high variance associated with upper and lower quartiles. The variability sources related to the management and effectiveness in weed control have mainly determined the productivity gap, "Know-how" (suitability of the chosen management plan), "optimization" (timely and accuracy of interventions) and "seed bank" (previous operations and land uses affecting the weeds dynamics) were responsible of the low yield in 77%, 54% and 31% of the cases, respectively, drowning out the impact of climate, soil and variety. Results are useful to drive further scientific inquiries and evaluations consistently with the faced reality by the farmers, and suggest that improvements in the farmer' know-how and skills can lead to further yield increase and variability reduction. The participatory research, adopted to explore complex systems, has worked in this direction, fostering the co-creation of knowledge and innovation and the social cohesion. However, the methodology showed constraints mainly related to the time-consuming surveys and its nature affected by human component. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]