All the news

• 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.

• 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.

• 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’).

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• '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.

• 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.