All the news

• Intercropping event to go virtual
  

  DECEMBER update: The organisers of next year’s Intercropping for Sustainability conference have opted for a virtual event via Zoom. Organisers had pledged to remain flexible about the format for the event, which was scheduled to be held at the UK’s University of Reading on January 19th and 20th.

• Mixtures no ‘silver bullet’ to resistance
  

  Current efforts to stop the spread of resistance through the use of pesticide mixtures might sometimes “be doing as much harm as good”, says ENDURE partner Rothamsted Research.

• DIVERSify: Watch and learn!
  

  The DIVERSify project has launched a mini-series “exploring the benefits and challenges of cultivating crop mixtures as an alternative to monoculture”. The series is called Growing Beyond Monoculture and currently consists of three episodes.

• PPPs in Swiss field crops: Use and aquatic risks
  

  Researchers at Agroscope, ENDURE’s Swiss partner, have completed a study examining the use and risk of plant protection products (PPPs) in the country’s field crops over a period of 10 years. They conclude that decreasing amounts of PPPs are being used in the country but show that quantity alone does not determine the risk to the environment.

• August kick-off for webinar series
  

  France’s Cultiver et Protéger Autrement (Growing and protecting crops differently) national priority research programme is to launch a series of webinars, beginning on Monday August 31. The priority programme is designed to support research towards pesticide-free agriculture by producing breakthroughs in knowledge.

• IWMPRAISE: Latest newsletter now available
  

  IWMPRAISE (Integrated Weed Management: PRActical Implementation and Solutions for Europe) has produced its fourth newsletter, bringing readers up to date with the latest news from the Horizon 2020 project. The project is now entering its fourth and penultimate year and 2020 should have seen the finalisation of experiments and a plethora of workshops and open days, activities which were rendered impossible by the Covid-19 pandemic.

• Have you signed up for ENDURE News?
  

  Have you subscribed to ENDURE News, the newsletter produced every six months? The latest edition was published at the end of June and offers a useful recap of all that has been happening on the website. This includes the publication of our extensive survey on glyphosate use in European agriculture, revealing the variety of uses for which it is used and the cropping systems which depend on it.

• Learning in the virtual world
  

  Covid-19 has meant that we have all had to adapt our working practices, ensure social distancing and keep colleagues and family safe. For many of us it has seen a major increase in the use of online meetings and this has certainly been the case for Certiphyto’s world tour. The tour had barely kicked off in the French Caribbean (pictured right, a visit to an organic producer in Martinique) when France went into lockdown, bringing what should have been a 22-date tour to a rapid halt.

• PhD to focus on pest modelling in rice
  

  France’s INRAE and CIRAD are offering a PhD focusing on modelling “multiple pests in rice crops for agroecological rice protection in Cambodia”. The PhD should help tackle the excessive use of pesticides in Cambodian rice crops, where up to 13 treatments are used each cropping season, leading to some European exports being refused because of excess residues.

• IWMPRAISE offers IWM inspiration
  

  IWMPRAISE, the Horizon 2020 project dedicated to Integrated Weed Management (IWM), has produced a series of ‘inspiration sheets’ over recent weeks. They present guidance on techniques such as inter-row hoeing in small grain cereals and improving crop diversification through the use of intercrops and subsidiary crops, alongside a series of inspiration sheets on the biology and management of a selection of weeds.