All the news

• IWMPRAISE: Game, guide and more!
  

  With the five-year IWMPRAISE project (Integrated Weed Management: Practical implementation solutions for Europe) due to end this November, members have been busy, staging a mini-symposium in Athens the day before June’s European Weed Research Society (EWRS) symposium, presenting its work at the latter event, and producing useful tools for those involved in weed management.

• DiverIMPACTS: Watch the final conference
  

  If you missed the final conference of DiverIMPACTS, which examined systems approaches to support agroecological transitions in the agri-food system, you can now watch proceedings on the project’s YouTube channel.

• DiverIMPACTS: Explore diversification experiences
  

  Data and the results of the analyses of recent crop diversification experiences and scientific literature conducted by the DiverIMPACTS project are now publicly available through two updated web-based applications.

• IPMWORKS: Hubs and coaches established
  

  The IPMWORKS project devoted much of its first year on establishing its hubs of demonstration farms and reports that 22 new hubs are up and running. And in a further big step, the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions earlier this year meant that the project’s hub coaches could meet for a capacity building session in France.

• EuroBlight: Workshop and sampling results
  

  More than 100 people attended May’s EuroBlight workshop in Switzerland, either physically or virtually. EuroBlight, the potato late blight network for Europe, has also released details of its 2021 sampling campaign, which saw the collection and genotyping of almost 2,500 samples from 26 countries.

• PPP, biodiversity and ecosystem services
  

  A multidisciplinary 46-strong group of experts has completed a two-year collective scientific expertise analysing the impacts of plant protection products (PPP) on biodiversity and ecosystem services.

• Wheat dwarf virus resistance uncovered
  

  Researchers from Germany’s Julius Kühn Institute (JKI) have tested 500 wheat accessions, including cultivars, gene bank accessions and wild species, for their resistance to wheat dwarf virus (WDV). A subsequent genome-wide association study (GWAS) has raised the possibilities of breeding future WDV-resistant varieties.

• Factors limiting hybrid plant varieties
  

  Experts from Wageningen University & Research (WUR) and Solynta, a Dutch hybrid potato breeding company, have completed a major survey on all the factors that determine whether commercial plant breeders can produce hybrid varieties of food crops.

• Pan-European research roadmap on the way
  

  Twenty-four research organisations from 16 European countries have joined forces to rethink the way research is conducted and develop new common research and experimentation strategies across the entire continent. The aim is to move ‘Towards a Chemical Pesticide-free Agriculture’ (including synthetic pesticides and other substances harmful to the environment and human health such as copper).

• Importance of ecological principles in agriculture
  

  Researchers from Scotland’s James Hutton Institute (JHI) have completed a study examining six years of agricultural research conducted for the Scottish government which “highlights the impact of the use of ecological principles in agriculture on sustainability, resilience, and provision of ecosystem functions”.