A new European Research Alliance has been launched, drawing together 24 research organisations from 16 countries focused on the topic ‘Towards a Chemical Pesticide-free Agriculture’. The Alliance includes eight ENDURE partner organisations and “aims to rethink the way research is carried out and develop new common research and experimentation strategies, not just at a national level, but throughout the whole continent”.
The creation of the Alliance has been driven by France’s National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE, formerly INRA) and German counterparts the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) and the Julius Kühn Institute (German Federal Research Centre for Cultivated Plants (JKI)). It was officially launched at last month’s Paris International Agricultural Show and its first task will be the production of a scientific roadmap for presentation to the European Commission, as a contribution to the European Green Deal.
The Alliance’s Memorandum of Understanding sets out its objectives: “The purpose of the Research Alliance is to help develop a sustainable European agri-food system free of chemical pesticides. To achieve this, the Partners will work together and with other relevant actors to develop a transdisciplinary research and innovation agenda that is aligned with the ‘European Green Deal’ priorities to deliver an environment-friendly, sustainable, fair, just and competitive agri-food sector across the whole value chain
“At the forefront of agricultural, technological, natural, socio-economic and regulatory sciences, we will establish and promote the prioritization of research needs and knowledge exchange, from basic to applied research. This research and innovation agenda will serve as a basis to facilitate discussions within the European Union and global agricultural community to establish high impact, tangible research and innovation projects on this topic.
“Partners will also foster collaborations within their countries and at EU level to develop plans and proposals for future research programmes and for policy support, so that they will improve the sustainability and competitiveness of the sector, especially in regards to integrated management systems. Partners will thus raise awareness of the importance of the issue and the need for a strong research and innovation paradigm shift supported by dedicated funding.”
In a press release marking the launch, INRAE reports that multiple common research avenues have already been identified. These include establishing a better use of agroecological principles to develop disease-resistant production systems, better exploitation of the major potential offered by plant breeding, developing the use of new technologies and equipment, and a better understanding of the levers and obstacles to socio-economic transition.
It reports that the roadmap “calls into question the current research methods by integrating systemic and multidisciplinary approaches. The new methods must reinforce the links between the production of knowledge and the experimentation process, both in the lab and in the field. The goal is an open science system, where researchers work closely together with the world of agriculture to implement changes promptly, sharing their work and its results all over the continent, including all types of agriculture, and integrating the variety of climates and soils in order to test the alternative solutions at a bigger scale.”
ENDURE members belonging to the Alliance:
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