Résumé
Crop diversity is an integral part of a much larger resource system that include genes and informational and cultural components associated to seeds, either in the form on scientific or farmer knowledge and know-how. The different components of this larger resource system are not only highly interconnected, but often overlapping. However, they are often managed in isolation under various governance approaches and regulatory instruments. Effective and sustainable mobilization of crop diversity depends on a comprehensive approach for the larger social-ecological system and on enhanced account for the interactions between its three components: actors, resources, institutions. The paper describes situations in which the lack of consideration for these interactions leads to inadequacies in existing frameworks regulating the conservation, use and exchange of crop diversity. These inadequacies are reflected in binary and somehow artificial divides -such as in situ/ex situ; seed/genetic resources ; conservation/use; farmers' rights/breeders' rights ; formal/informal seed systems- that fails to represent crop diversity management practices. These divisions ultimately generate tensions among actors and impact their ability to adequately mobilize the crop diversity they need to meet the various challenges they are facing. Building on the experience of an ongoing project entitled CoEx that deals with the diversity of crop diversity management practices in West Africa, the paper then describes multi-scale, interand trans-disciplinary approaches for better characterizing the interactions between the different components of the social-ecological system in which crop diversity is embedded. It ultimately argues that more reflexive approaches are also needed to encourage more open and responsible involvement of research organizations with regard their role in the diversity and complexity of crop diversity management. Altogether, these different methods account for the co-evolving nature of the various components of the system and aim to integrating the different spatial and governance scales at which crop diversity is managed.