All the news

• IYPH 2020: Share your plant health story!
  

  Organisers of the International Year of Plant Health 2020 are on the hunt for human interest stories concerning plant health. In particular, they are seeking stories that show how someone has contributed to plant health (farmer, public or private sector employee, student etc.), the damage caused by plant pests and diseases, and how plant health can help end hunger, reduce poverty, protect the environment or boost economic development.

• Weed diversity for mitigating yield losses
  

  Experts from ENDURE partners in France and Italy have pooled forces to analyse the effects of weed communities on crop yields, revealing that not all communities engender yield losses even when no weeding takes place. Furthermore, they say, there is a link between high weed diversity and a reduced risk of major crop losses.

• Aiming for zero pesticides in arable crops
  

  EcophytoPIC, France’s Integrated Pest Management (IPM) portal, has drawn together details of the experimental work conducted as part of the country’s Rés0Pest network. The Rés0Pest experimental network aims to produce new references and knowledge for designing innovative cropping systems that are less reliant on pesticides, using IPM principles and combining different techniques to limit pest damage in arable crops.

• CDC: Read the flyer!
  

  Europe’s Crop Diversification Cluster has produced a flyer explaining how they are joining forces to help change European agriculture. The cluster brings together six European projects (and partners further afield) addressing multiple facets of crop diversification, including the introduction of species mixtures, innovative plant teams and encouraging legume-based systems.

• September 2020 date for biocontrol group
  

  The International Organization for Biological and Integrated Control West Palearctic Regional Section (IOBC-WPRS) is staging the 16th meeting of its Biological and Integrated Control of Plant Pathogens working group in 2020. Running from September 14 to 17, 2020, the event is being held at Poland’s University of Gdansk.

• Country profile: Lithuania
  

  In the latest of our country profiles, Ilma Rimkeviciene, from the PI Lithuanian Agricultural Advisory Service, introduces us to the integrated plant protection information, consulting and training information service the country has introduced as part of its drive towards more sustainable agriculture.

• Call for papers for 2020 pest events
  

  Calls for papers have been issued for two events scheduled for Montpellier SupAgro in southern France in October 2020. First up is the international conference organised once every three years by the pests and beneficials committee of Végéphyl, France’s plant health association.

• Reminder: EUVRIN IPM meeting in November
  

  The next meeting of the Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Working Group of the European Vegetable Research Institutes Network (EUVRIN) will be at Vegenov, Saint Pol de Léon, France, on November 14 and 15, 2019.

• Success and failure in diversification
  

  Researchers examining the factors affecting the success or failure of diversification experiences in agriculture have compiled a database using 128 validated responses from a survey across 12 European countries.

• Diversification cluster goes live!
  

  A new website has been launched by the six Horizon 2020 projects working together in the ‘crop diversification cluster’. ReMIX, one of the projects involved, reports: “Projects within the cluster are collaborating to increase the impact of crop diversification research and encourage sustained uptake of diversification measures by farmers in Europe through innovations across the agri-value chain.”