About ENDURE

• New guides for better banana production
  

  ENDURE’s Banana Case Study has been a truly international effort, bringing together researchers from as far afield as the French West Indies, the Canary Islands and Cameroon, in addition to the expertise based here in mainland Europe. The results of this international effort are now being made available in a series of publications in ENDURE’s From Science to Field series.

• Paper puts maize under the spotlight
  

  With more than 13 million hectares of farmland devoted to maize in Europe, the crop clearly merited the attention of one of ENDURE’s case study research teams. And you can now read the results of their research in a paper recently published in the Journal of Applied Entomology.

• Advisers invited to explore ENDURE IC
  

  The ENDURE Information Centre, the central point of reference for extending expert knowledge, recommendations and advice for extension services, advisers and researchers concerning all aspects of Integrated Pest Management, is now accessible to all those in the crop protection community.

• NEWSFLASH: ENDURE conference in November
  

  ENDURE will this year host its second major international conference when it stages ‘Integrated Pest Management in Europe - The ENDURE Network of Excellence shares the fruits of four years’ research with the crop protection community’ at the Eurosites George V centre in Paris, France.

• New training leaflet: the participatory approach
  

  When it comes to learning about Integrated Pest Management (IPM), participatory training has been a proven success in encouraging farmers to introduce innovative and sustainable pest control strategies, say ENDURE researchers.

• Dutch and German leaflets now online
  

  Whether you know them as Kartoffel, aardappels or pommes de terre, growing potatoes is not a simple business, not least because of the potential threat posed by late blight, the potentially devastating disease caused by the pseudo-fungus Phytophthora infestans.

• Social Science Insights examines supermarkets
  

  A new Social Science Insights leaflet has been added to the ENDURE library, shedding light on the role played by supermarket produce schemes in the European food chain and examining their possible role in creating more sustainable crop protection practices.

• DEXiPM: Assessing cropping system sustainability
  

  When it comes to designing cropping systems that are less reliant on pesticide use, researchers have a large array of potentially interesting options available to them. These can include, for example, relatively simple measures such as changing sowing dates or introducing new crop sequences through to the use of the latest technology for detecting pests or plants specially bred for disease resistance.

• Statistics regulation completes pesticides package
  

  The final strand of the European Commission’s four-part ‘pesticides package’ reached the statute book last month (December), with the publication of Regulation (EC) No 1185/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning statistics on pesticides.

• LandMod 2010
  

  03-05 February: Montpellier, France
  LandMod 2010, the 2010 Conference on Integrative Landscape Modelling, will bring together scientists working in the main disciplines dealing with ecosystems and landscpae simulation and management, complex dynamic modelling and the assessment of vulnerability, resilience and adaptation of agro and ecosystems under human influence.