Welcome to the 27th edition of ENDURE News, the electronic newsletter from ENDURE. Please feel free to share this newsletter with colleagues.
- ‘Inspiring’ Agroecological Crop Protection course
Some 26 participants from 10 countries, including PhD students as well as postdocs, junior and senior researchers working in Africa, Asia, South America, Central America and Europe, attended ENDURE’s international training course on Agroecological Crop Protection (ACP) which ran from February 12 to 16, 2018. - ACP course sparks South-East Asian ‘twin’
Drawing inspiration from ENDURE’s Agroecological Crop Protection (ACP) international training course held in Volterra, Italy (see story above), a ‘Twin Scientist School’ was staged in Can Tho, Vietnam, in March, providing the opportunity for 23 participants to learn more about the ACP approach, which is seen as providing important benefits for crop protection in South-East Asia. - Call for stakeholders to boost IPM
A pan-European group of IPM experts has drawn on the work conducted within the three-year European Research Area Network on Coordinated Integrated Pest Management (ERA-Net C-IPM) to produce a paper outlining the steps stakeholders can take to boost IPM uptake in Europe. - The case for IPM breeding programmes
European experts have called for a shake-up in the way crops are bred for Integrated Pest Management (IPM), pointing out that current private breeding programmes are mainly targeted at conventional agriculture and therefore do not produce the species and varieties more sustainable systems require. - Award marks Franco-Hungarian collaboration
ENDURE coordinator Antoine Messéan has been made an Honorary Professor at Szent István University in Gödöllö, Hungary, in recognition of the long-standing collaboration between his institute, France’s National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA), and the Hungarian university. It is a relationship first forged in collaborations for various Diabrotica-related European projects from 2000 and, specifically, 14 years ago during the preparation stage for the ENDURE Network of Excellence. - IPM central to wheat anti-resistance strategies
EuroWheat has stressed the importance of implementing Integrated Pest Management (IPM) strategies in wheat as fungicide resistance continues to develop across the continent, raising concerns about the impact of Septoria tritici blotch (STB) on yields. - Halving pesticide use in apple orchards
Researchers from INRA (France’s National Institute for Agricultural Research) have reported on their long-term experimental work on apple orchards, which has seen them reduce pesticide use by up to 50% through a series of measures based on increased forecasting and observation of pests and diseases. - £5 million boost to UK research
Four of the United Kingdom’s leading universities and research centres have been given a £5.3 million (around €6 milllion) boost to fund their work on improving crop resilience, sustainability and quality. The recipients, including ENDURE partner Rothamsted Research (pictured), will receive the funding over the next five years to ‘help develop new technologies and environmentally friendly production for farmers and growers across the country’. - Biocontrol on the march in France
French Integrated Pest Management (IPM) experts have provided an update on the biological control situation in the country, where these alternative control methods continue to be become more widely used in IPM strategies. The authors identify some of the key drivers behind these developments, including legal changes to encourage the development of new biocontrol options, major investments in both public and private research, the development of experimental networks and projects and the incorporation of biocontrol in the country’s pesticide savings certificate scheme (Certificats d’Economie de Produits de Phytopharmaceutiques or CEPP). - IPM ‘packages’ undergo field testing
The EUCLID project’s Integrated Pest Management (IPM) ‘packages’ are currently undergoing field testing with farmers, offering alternative approaches for combating pests and diseases in three important crops (grapes, leafy vegetables and tomatoes). - JHI heads Centre of Expertise in Plant Health
ENDURE’s Scottish partner, the James Hutton Institute (JHI), is heading up the country’s new Centre of Expertise in Plant Health, which is taking a coordinated cross-sector approach to pest monitoring and will also seek to help stakeholders improve their own plant health capabilities. - DiverIMPACTS: get the newsletter and flyer
New ways of keeping up with the DiverIMPACTS project (Diversification through Rotation, Intercropping, Multiple Cropping, Promoted with Actors and value-Chains towards Sustainability) are now available with the publication of its first newsletter and the production of an informative flyer. Funded under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme, DiverIMPACTS brings together 34 partners from 11 countries, including farmers and farmer organisations, advisory services, cooperatives, logistics providers, scientists, industry professionals and representatives of civil society and rural areas with the aim of exploring the full potential of diversifying cropping systems and thereby improving agricultural productivity and resource efficiency and creating sustainable value chains. - Progress on more sustainable oilseed rape
Two ENDURE partners have published details of their ongoing work on more sustainable methods for growing oilseed rape (OSR). INRA (France’s National Institute for Agricultural Research) has revealed details of its promising trials of accompanying winter rapeseed crops with legumes as a means of reducing weed pressure, while Germany’s Julius Kühn Institute (JKI) hosted an international workshop on ‘Clubroot disease in oilseed rape – status quo and research demand’ with an emphasis on integrated approaches. - Significant improvements required in NAPs
The European Commission has urged Member States to ‘significantly’ improve their National Action Plans (NAP) to address the shortcomings identified in their review of progress on the implementation of the Pesticides Directive (2009/128/EC) and to ‘establish more precise and measurable targets’. - Search for SWD predators closes in
The prospects of new biological controls to combat spotted-wing drosophila, a serious invasive pest causing extensive economic damage in berries and stone fruit, have moved a step closer thanks to two projects involving ENDURE partners. - Catch up with Agroecology Europe
The first newsletter from Agroecology Europe is now available, offering reports and video from last October’s European Agroecology Forum, which brought together more than 300 farmers, researchers, students, policy makers and representatives from social movements and civil society in Lyon, France. - Crop loss conference: final report online
The final report from last October’s three-day International Conference on Global Crop Losses Caused by Diseases, Pests and Weeds is now available. The event was organised by INRA, through its SMaCH (Sustainable Management of Crop Health) and GloFoodS (Transitions to Global Food Security) metaprogrammes, and in partnership with CIRAD and ISPP (International Society of Plant Pathology). - ‘One health’ approach to include crop pests
CIRAD and INRA, two of ENDURE’s French partners, have combined forces with other research and higher educational institutions to form a network to drive innovation in the control of not only crop pests but also arthropods which transmit pathogens causing infectious diseases in humans and animals. - New times ahead for European weed management
Integrated weed management is the way to go for sustainable and resilient agriculture. A new Horizon 2020 project will support and promote its implementation in Europe, reports Janne Hansen, from the Department of Agroecology at Aarhus University, Denmark. - Agroscope trials fungi to control Japanese visitor
Researchers from Agroscope, ENDURE’s Swiss partner, will this year be investigating whether it is feasible to control Japanese beetles in the field with a fungi that has already proved effective against May and June beetles. - Blight tracking results now available
EuroBlight, the potato late blight network for Europe, has revealed the findings of its ongoing work to chart changes in the European population of the pathogen, a major effort which saw almost 1,500 samples from 16 countries genotyped in last year’s growing season. - Profiting from legumes
The TRUE project has marked its first anniversary with the release of its second newsletter, bringing readers up to date with its work on ‘Transition paths to sustainable legume based systems in Europe’, which includes 24 case studies in three pedoclimatic regions across the continent (‘Atlantic’, ‘Continental’ and ‘Mediterranean’). - Updates for events calendar
Nearly 20 new events have been added to ENDURE’s events calendar, including July’s 20th International Conference on Agroecology and Organic Farming, which is being held in the Swedish capital of Stockholm, and ECE 2018, the XI European Congress of Entomology, which is being staged the same month in Naples, Italy. - ESA 2018 to address innovative systems
ENDURE’s Swiss partner Agroscope is leading the organisation of the XV European Society for Agronomy Congress, which runs from August 27 to 31 in the lakeside city of Geneva and will address the theme of ‘Innovative cropping and farming systems for high quality food production’. - EMPHASIS on LAMP technology
The EMPHASIS project (Effective Management of Pests and Harmful Alien Species – Integrated Solutions), which is seeking practical solutions ‘to predict, to prevent and to protect agriculture and forestry systems from native and alien pests threats’, will be focusing on loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) as an emerging molecular tool for the rapid in-field diagnosis of plant diseases at a summer school this July. - To find out more about ENDURE, visit: www.endure-network.eu
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