All the news

• Going bananas…in the Netherlands!
  

  When we think of banana production, the Netherlands might not be the first country to come to mind. But bananas were indeed harvested in the country last week, the first crop from the Neder Banaan greenhouse in the town of Ede, central Netherlands. The greenhouse is the result of a collaboration with researchers from Wageningen University and Research (WUR) and is using new cultivation methods and banana varieties that will contribute to more sustainable banana cultivation worldwide.

• ABIM 2021: Catch up online
  

  If you could not attend October’s Annual Biocontrol Industry Meeting (ABIM), either in person or online, you can catch up with some of the key events via ABIM’s YouTube channel. These include the meeting’s keynote addresses, a TV-style panel discussion and the Bernard Blum Award for biocontrol innovation.

• Events calendar: Updates for 2022
  

  The Events calendar is looking better than it has done for some time, with the rescheduling of events from the past 18 months in 2022, alongside newly planned conferences etc. No-one is taking things for granted, though, with some events going hybrid with a mix of online and in-person attendees and others remaining online.

• French boost for crop adaptation
  

  France is stepping up its capacity to adapt crops to climate change with the opening of two major facilities in the southern city of Montpellier. The €10.4 million Agropolis Resource Centre for Crop Conservation, Adaptation and Diversity (ARCAD), hosted by ENDURE partner INRAE, is France’s first crop conservation ‘bank’, while CIRAD’s €3 million AbioPhen greenhouses make it possible to simulate future climate conditions.

• Deadlines for EWRS Symposium
  

  Organisers of the 19th European Weed Research Society Symposium are hopeful the event will finally go ahead in June 2022, a year later than originally planned. The event, ‘Lighting the future of weed science’, is scheduled for 20-23 June 2022 at The Eugenides Foundation (commonly known as the planetarium) in Athens, Greece.

• IPM Decisions: DSS on track for next year
  

  IPM Decisions is on track to provide access to 17 Decision Support Systems (DSS) through its online platform early in 2022. Scheduled for the first release are DSS dealing with common diseases such as late blight in potato, early blight in tomato and downy mildew in lettuce, alongside invertebrate pests such as carrot rust fly, cabbage moth and cabbage root fly.

• Rarer crops to return to European fields
  

  Six ‘forgotten’ arable crops will be making a comeback in European fields over the next four years, driven by a new project called CROPDIVA (Climate Resilient Orphan croPs for increased DIVersity in Agriculture). The crops concerned are oats, triticale, buckwheat, faba beans, lupins and hull-less barley.

• LegValue: Legume success stories
  

  The LegValue project (Legume Innovation Network) has added a rake of new resources to its website and YouTube channel. These include an examination of the European Union markets for key legumes (faba bean, soya bean, chickpea, lentil and field pea), examples of the successful introduction of legumes into rotations by farmers and the addition of new videos.

• EuroBlight: Recommendations to combat disease
  

  EuroBlight, a potato late blight network for Europe, celebrates 25 years of existence this year and has set out a series of recommendations to continue the work to combat the disease, which comes with a huge cost worldwide in terms of its control and crop losses.

• AgriLink: Take the course, explore the abstracts
  

  Following its final online conference, the AgriLink project officially comes to an end this month, leaving behind a legacy of useful tools and information. The project, dedicated to ‘Linking farmers, advisers and researchers to boost innovation’, has produced 86 practice abstracts, with another 12 due to come, and also offers a free online course for advisers focused on creating innovative agricultural advisory services through a Living Lab.