All the news

• Agricology: Resilience and systems approaches
  

  The latest edition of the Agricology newsletter focuses on “building resilience through growing more diverse, alternative crops, genetic diversity, working with nature to control weeds, varietal testing, and integrating trees into the farming system”. Agricology is an organisation which believes in “practical sustainable farming regardless of labels”.

• Key dates for BioProTech
  

  Early Bird pricing is available until November 1, 2021, for next year’s Plant BioProTech symposium in the French city of Reims. Potential speakers at the event have until October 4 this year to submit abstracts.

• Healthy interest in innovation vouchers
  

  Wageningen University & Research (WUR) has reported healthy interest in its innovation voucher system, a scheme which provides applicants with the possibility of testing an innovation or new technology for circular agriculture through WUR’s Farm of the Future agroecological research project.

• Catch up with the James Hutton Institute
  

  The latest issue of Hutton Highlights, the quarterly review from the James Hutton Institute, is now available. The review is designed to show “how Hutton science is driving the sustainable use of land and natural resources”, with the June edition being published on what would have been James Hutton’s 295th birthday.

• New international group to tackle weeds
  

  An international consortium of scientists and industry professionals has been formed to harness new genomic techniques to address the growing threat that weeds pose to crops. Called the International Weed Genomics Consortium, the group is being led by the USA’s Colorado State University (CSU) and includes the UK’s Rothamsted Research.

• France seeks to drive innovation in plant genetics
  

  Some 28 of France’s leading public and private research organisations involved in plant science, plant breeding and connected technologies have come together to form PlantAlliance, a consortium designed to boost the pace of innovation in genetics, genomics and the breeding of new varieties.

• Red flag raised for banana crops
  

  Researchers from ENDURE partners Wageningen University and Research (WUR) and CIRAD are among those contributing to a new study which shows that fungicides are losing their effectiveness against Black Sigatoka (Black Leaf Streak Disease or BLSD), a devastating disease in banana crops.

• Focus on rarer arable crops
  

  Agroscope, ENDURE’s Swiss partner, is to lead a work package dedicated to diversified cropping systems as part of the €6 million Horizon 2020 project CROPDIVA. CROPDIVA, whose name is derived from ‘Climate Resilient Orphan croPs for increased DIVersity in Agriculture’, is to examine arable crops that are currently rarely grown compared to wheat and potatoes.

• Positive diversification in Spain
  

  Four years after the launch of the Diverfarming project, its Spanish team has been able to analyse the first results of their trials, encompassing the introduction of a number of innovative diversification measures and sustainable farming practices over the course of three years.

• Plant BioProTech returns in 2022
  

  Plant BioProTech returns to France in 2022 for its third edition. The symposium will run from June 28 to July 1, 2022, in Reims in the country’s Grand Est region. The organisers are expecting more than 300 visitors and 60 speakers in an event focused on ‘The path to a more sustainable agriculture’.