Beyond a global increase in the richness of the agrosystem, an increase in predation or parasitism favoured by the conservation of habitats of beneficial organisms is assessed in many studies. There are generally only partial effects for pest control which is insufficient to reduce the use of pesticides except for some pests, e.g. mites and psyllids that can be tolerated at high levels of populations without any damage on fruits or reduction in yield. Further research is needed to investigate all of the processes involved in conservation biological control on different interconnected scales and to identify: (1) the most relevant beneficial candidates or association of candidates to be promoted among predators and parasitoids, generalists and specialists; and (2) the species composition, age, density and design of plant assemblages that would maximise beneficial effects and minimise detrimental ones when considering the global orchard community. The reduction in pesticide exposition of orchard communities is certainly a key point to maximise ecosystem services for pest control. We also promote the redesign of orchard systems to meet such a purpose of an ‘agroecologic’ orchard. We particularly propose to investigate: (1) the effect of a decrease in the genetic (one clone) and spatial(linear arrangements) monotony of current orchard designs; (2) the emphasis of some favourable traits of current orchard designs, i.e. multi-strata design, plant diversified environment and soil litter development. Options such as the interplanting of missing strata (i.e. bush layer), mix cropping coupled with the supervised management of the whole orchard plant diversity, and the management of the soil organic status are candidate issues to favour functional diversity for pest control; and (3) the manipulation of the architectural and microclimatic traits of the fruit tree through genetics and tree training, as a
tool to modify the habitat of orchard pests and the foraging area of their natural enemies, and therefore their development. Lastly, the challenge mainly relies on integrating all these tools on different interconnected scales, from fruit tree leaf infrastructures to orchard and landscape scales, in order to maximise ecosystem services on each scale and to implement synergistic effects.