All the news

• New EU project to focus on crop diversification
  

  A major new five-year project was launched in May 2017 to explore the full potential of diversifying cropping systems in order to provide improved productivity, resource efficiency and sustainable value chains. Called DiverIMPACTS, the project is being coordinated by ENDURE coordinator Antoine Messéan (INRA, France) and brings together a broad consortium comprising 34 partners from 11 European countries, including farmers and farmers’ organisations, advisory services, cooperatives, logistics providers, scientists, industry, and representatives of civil society and rural areas.

• First Agroecology Europe Forum to be held
  

  Agroecology Europe, a European association to promote agroecology created in 2016 by 19 founding members from 10 countries, is to stage its first Agroecology Europe Forum this autumn and will be focusing on ‘Fostering synergies between movements, science and practice’.

• Knowledge sharing for biopesticide efficacy
  

  Britain’s Agricultural and Horticultural Development Board (AHDB) is seeking to boost the efficacy of biopesticides by improving users’ knowledge about which products should be used under which circumstances and providing more details on how they should be applied in practical situations.

• Special issue focuses on PURE results
  

  A special issue entitled ‘Pesticide use and risk reduction with IPM’ of the international journal Crop Protection has recently been published. The special issue is the fruit of the research collaboration conducted within the European Union’s PURE project (Pesticide Use and-risk Reduction in European farming systems with Integrated Pest Management), coordinated by Françoise Lescourret (pictured right), a well-known scientist affiliated to INRA, one of ENDURE’s leading partners.

• Two new clones of ‘concern’, says EuroBlight
  

  Researchers from EuroBlight, Europe’s potato late blight network, have reported on their ongoing monitoring of the pathogen, noting a marked local expansion of two recently emerged clones in 2016.

• Insight into France’s training the trainers days
  

  For the second time in three years, ENDURE communication team leader Philippe Delval has hit the roads of France to conduct a series of special days dedicated to sharing the latest knowledge on alternative crop protection techniques with those responsible for providing the training required to obtain the obligatory certification needed to handle pesticides in the country.

• Neonicotinoids in the spotlight
  

  France has launched a €1.5 million call for projects to improve the emergence of neonicotinoid-free agriculture and explore innovative perspectives for crop production methods which avoid the use of these insecticides.

• Brexit: What direction for crop protection?
  

  While negotiations have only just begun on the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union, thoughts are turning to how British producers will protect their crops in the future and how the country’s plant protection product (PPP) regulations will change in response to Brexit.

• SMaCH projects focus on impact
  

  INRA, France’s National Institute for Agricultural Research, has unveiled the projects which will be launched as a result of this year’s SMaCH (Sustainable Management of Crop Health) call. The call was titled Impact, with the aim of encouraging projects which stimulate the impact of research results by encouraging their transfer to end users.

• Rothamsted sets out five-year vision
  

  ENDURE partner Rothamsted Research, the world’s oldest agricultural science research institute, has set out its ambitious vision for the next five years at a time of what it describes as unprecedented international uncertainty and diverse social, economic and environmental challenges.