Researchers worldwide are expected to design and develop agroecological systems to address major challenges such as increasing biotic pressure and climate change. But to design effective innovations, researchers should integrate new cropping techniques into wider agricultural systems such as cropping systems, innovative farms, alternative food systems, or multifunctional landscapes. This integration requires a long process of exploration in which the object under design can transform and shift to a different organisational scale. In this article, we wish to introduce a new analytical framework highlighting the systemic mechanisms involved in the scale transformations of design objects along agroecological design processes. We conceptualise an agroecological design process as a non-linear unpredictable process in which four components—a science consortium, non-scientific actors in the field, a problem situation and a design object—interact, and co-evolve through time. The scale transformations of the design objects and their drivers are the results of interactions and knowledge flows between these four components. This analytical framework was tested and further elaborated through ex-post analysis of design processes in three contrasting case studies in the context of tropical horticulture. Data were collected through literature review, interviews, and focus group discussions with the researchers involved in the three design processes. Future design methods should take full account of the lengthy, non-linear, and transformational nature of agroecological design processes and the coexistence of different types of knowledge—holistic vs. reductionist, ecosystem focused vs. human-system focused—which can interconnect and nourish each other.

预计全世界的研究人员将设计和开发农业生态系统，以应对诸如不断增加的生物压力和气候变化等重大挑战。但是为了设计有效的创新，研究人员应该将新的种植技术整合到更广泛的农业系统中，例如种植系统、创新农场、替代食品系统或多功能景观。这种整合需要一个漫长的探索过程，在这个过程中，设计中的对象可以转换并转移到不同的组织规模。在本文中，我们希望介绍一个新的分析框架，强调设计对象在农业生态设计过程中的尺度转换所涉及的系统机制。我们将农业生态设计过程概念化为一个非线性不可预测的过程，其中四个组成部分——一个科学联盟、该领域的非科学参与者、一个问题情境和一个设计对象——相互作用，并随着时间的推移共同进化。设计对象的尺度转换及其驱动因素是这四个组件之间交互和知识流动的结果。通过对热带园艺背景下三个对比案例研究中设计过程的事后分析，对这一分析框架进行了测试和进一步阐述。通过文献回顾、访谈和与参与三个设计过程的研究人员进行焦点小组讨论来收集数据。未来的设计方法应充分考虑冗长、非线性、