All the news

• 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”.

• Understanding diversity in Swiss crop protection
  

  With the ambition of reducing the use of plant protection products (PPPs), Agroscope researchers in Switzerland have conducted a study on farmers’ behavioural patterns when using PPP on their crops.

• Diverfarming: Compost boosts bacterial community
  

  Spanish researchers working in the Diverfarming project have established the agricultural and environmental benefits to the bacterial community of applying compost rather than traditional fertilisers in soils.

• Projects focusing on sustainable production
  

  The SusCrop ERA-Net (Cofund on Sustainable Crop Production), which is aiming to “strengthen the European Research Area (ERA) in the field of Sustainable Crop Production through enhanced cooperation and coordination of different national and regional research programmes”, has released news of a rake of projects focused on more sustainable agriculture.