In this report:
I. Communications
II. Research
III. Education and training
IV. Support to policy
V. International relations

I. Communications

ENDURE has gained more than seven years' experience of engaging with a diversified audience including scientists, policy and farm advisers, trainers and other stakeholders. We encourage research projects to use these communication tools as vehicles to assist with the dissemination of their own results and recommendations.

Website:  A team of five professional communications officers maintain www.endure-network.eu, a high-visibility public website hosting a wealth of documents and tools. It enjoys an average of 2,200 visits per month.

Newsletter:  We regularly produce an electronic newsletter circulated to 2,200 recipients worldwide. To date, we have circulated 18 issues.

Targeting advisers:  ENDURE has a special commitment to provide support to farm advisers. It was therefore important for ENDURE to create and maintain the ENDURE Network of Advisers (ENA) and an associated newsletter. The ENA is a forum to share knowledge and experiences on plant protection across Europe. It currently has a membership of 171 English-speaking farm advisers from about 20 countries. Three newsletters have been circulated.

Information Centre:  The ENDURE Information Centre is an interactive website containing validated documents to support advisors in crop protection. The documents provided fall in two categories:

• Ready-to-use, scientifically sound, field-tested, practical to adopt and cost-effective information on IPM.
• Experimental work that has the potential to provide practical solutions in the future.

More than 1,000 documents are currently available but ENDURE wishes to substantially expand the scope of this database and its geographical coverage.

If the information is relevant, we encourage research projects to use these communications resources as a vehicle to reach a greater audience and enhance their dissemination impact.

II. Research

ENDURE created the ENDURE Resource Centre (ERC), an online repository cataloguing and providing easy access data and experimental resources for the crop protection research community. For example, the culture and collections section provides access to information on more than 650,000 samples of insect, pathogen and weed pests held by ENDURE partners across 10 European countries.

The ERC also hosts research platforms within which information on specific aspects of crop protection is collected, integrated and disseminated. These platforms include:

• EuroWheat, a source of information compiled from 10 European countries on major wheat pathogens and their control.
• EUResist with information on the incidence, monitoring and management of the most serious cases of pesticide resistance in Europe.
• QuantiPest provides information on tools and techniques for field experimentation and characterisation of pest injuries and populations with the goal of improving the assessment of IPM strategies.
• EuroBlight, which is the website of the European potato late blight network, compiling information from 23 European countries.

We encourage researchers to take advantage of these resources and to consider contributing to and strengthening the contents of the ERC.

III. Education and training

ENDURE conducts summer schools for postgraduate students on topics related to crop protection. These residential courses are organised by the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna of Pisa and take place at the new and beautiful campus of the International School for Advanced Education located in Volterra in the heart of the Tuscany countryside. We usually host 15-20 PhD students who are encouraged to take an active role in the learning process and interact with five to 10 international lecturers selected for their expertise. To date, we have conducted three summer schools:

• ' Biodiversity for crop protection' (2007)
• ' Modelling approaches to support IPM' (2009)
• 'New and emerging agricultural pests, diseases and weeds' (2010)
• 'Agroecology and IPM' (2012)

ENDURE can offer organisational support (advertising, communications, facilitation) for new ideas, contributions and collaborations on future summer schools at this venue.

ENDURE has developed a training guide on IPM for educational and advisory purposes. The guide is a compendium of 46 training sheets covering methods, tools and training modules on a diversity of topics pertinent to IPM.

IV. Support to policy

With European Member States facing significant challenges in introducing National Action Plans designed to deliver agricultural systems which make much greater use of IPM, ENDURE has been called upon to provide scientific expertise in a number of forums. Our track record includes:

• Presenting our foresight study 'European Crop Protection in 2030' at the European Parliament in Brussels in 2009.
• Successfully supporting an FP7 call for an integrated project on IPM and the creation of a new Collaborative Working Group on IPM within SCAR (Standing Committee for Agricultural Research).
• Continued participation in the European Commission DG Sanco Sustainable Use Directive Experts Forum and contributions to national bodies overseeing research associated with National Action Plans in France and Italy.
• Co-organising policy seminars under EU presidencies:
  EU experts meeting on ' National plans and programmes for the reduction of risks associated with the use of plant protection products' (Berlin, 2007).
• ' Sustainable Agriculture and Pesticides' (Paris, 2008).
• ' Sustainable Use of Pesticides and Integrated Pest Management (IPM) in East-Central Europe and the Baltics' (Radzikow, Poland, 2011).
• Contributing keynote speakers to events such as the plenary meeting of the OECD Working Group on Pesticides (Berlin, 2011).

We welcome input from organisations regarding the opportunities for and bottlenecks to IPM implementation which translate into research priorities or public policies that can be raised in the various forums open to ENDURE.

V. International relations

ENDURE has developed relationships with many groups outside Europe. CARBAP (African Research Centre on Banana and Plantain) and the University of Talca (Chile) collaborated in ENDURE case studies. We have a formal relationship with Embrapa (Brazil) and COLEACP (the Europe-Africa- Caribbean-Pacific Liaison Committee), and cross-exchanges with INTA (Argentina). The Zhejiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences (China) participated in several ENDURE events. We also organised a session on networking for IPM with researchers from the USA, Brazil and Argentina at a 2012 IPM symposium in Memphis (USA). ENDURE organised international conferences in 2008 and 2010. The 2010 conference, held in Paris, attracted 350 visitors from 50 different countries.

We are currently exploring opportunities to strengthen our existing international links and to generate new ones. Here, too, we hope that other projects will take advantage of these relationships when relevant and useful. To contact ENDURE regarding use of and/or contribution to the information, tools and services it offers, please click here.

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