All the news

• INRA: An ‘intense’ 2016
  

  INRA, France’s National Institute for Agricultural Research, has hailed 2016 as an ‘intense’ year, notable for the celebration of the organisation’s 70th anniversary, a record number of scientific publications and co-publications with partners around the world, the appointment of a new president and a focus on 2025, with the adoption of a 10-year strategic plan.

• Millions to kick-start Smart Crop Protection
  

  The UK’s Rothamsted Research has secured around £6.3 million (€6.8 million) of government funding to kick-start its new five-year strategic programme. Called Smart Crop Protection (SCP), the ENDURE partner's programme is focused on the sustainable control of pests, pathogens and weeds.

• Joint German-Chinese effort to tackle SWD
  

  The Julius Kühn Institute (JKI), ENDURE’s German partner, reports on a successful multi-disciplinary symposium which brought together experts from Germany and China, in addition to representatives from Italy and Switzerland, to investigate integrated management of spotted wing drosophila (SWD) earlier this summer.

• Agroscope investigates 'Smart Farming'
  

  Agroscope, ENDURE's Swiss partner, has underlined its commitment to ‘Smart Farming’, conducting research on the topic at its Tänikon site, which is being converted into the Swiss Future Farm. The latter is designed to stimulate “professional exchanges on concrete applications with farmers”, with Agroscope investigating how new technologies can best be used in Swiss agriculture.

• BIOCOMES: ‘Mind shift for IPM’
  

  The introduction of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) often requires a ‘mind shift’ among growers and producers, with an acceptance that the high efficacy rates associated with synthetic pest management will not be matched by the introduction of biological products, reports the BIOCOMES project in its latest newsletter.

• 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.