All the news

• News from SMaCH: System design and more
  

  Two fresh newsletters from INRA's Sustainable Management of Crop Health (SMaCH) metaprogramme are now available (in French), one focusing on the design of sustainable systems and agro-ecological transitions, and one examining the management of crop health at the landscape and territorial scales.

• Reducing pesticides while maintaining performance
  

  French researchers have demonstrated that low pesticide use rarely decreases productivity and profitability in arable farms, and that major reductions in pesticide use across the country could be achieved through a range of changes in practices, provided the appropriate support is given to farmers.

• Smart farming for efficient resource use
  

  The fourth Sustainability Conference organised by ENDURE’s Swiss partner, Agroscope, this year presented the principles, opportunities and challenges of ‘smart farming’ and outlined the latest developments and current research needs.

• Catch up with BIOCOMES
  

  There is a chance to catch up with progress in the BIOCOMES project (‘New biological products for sustainable farming and forestry’) with the publication of its ninth newsletter. The project, comprising 13 industrial partners and 14 research institutes and universities from 14 countries, is seeking to offer 11 new biological control products for arable, vegetable and fruit tree crops, plus new solutions for forestry and two new production technologies.

• EuroBlight workshop: Register now!
  

  EuroBlight’s 2017 workshop tackling early and late blight in potato crops is taking shape. The event runs from May 14 to 17, 2017, in Aarhus, Denmark, and is being hosted by ENDURE member Aarhus University.

• Boosting social media to share IPM info
  

  Plans to increase the use and visibility of EcophytoPIC, France’s Integrated Pest Management portal, have received useful insight with the completion of a 10-month study into the portal’s use of social media, in particular Twitter and Facebook.

• Events calendar - check it out!
  

  We regularly update our events calendar and more than a dozen new events have been recently added. New events include Cereals 2017, the United Kingdom’s technical event for the arable industry. The 2017 edition will be held on June 14 and 15 at Boothby Graffoe, Lincolnshire, and is expected to attract more than 24,000 farmers, agronomists and industry professionals.

• EcophytoPIC continues to expand
  

  France’s Integrated Pest Management (IPM) portal, www.ecophytopic.fr, continues to expand, acting as a repository for a wealth of information on various aspects of farming with less pesticides across six product groups (arable crops, arboriculture, vegetables, tropical crops, horticulture and viticulture).

• New criteria for late blight risk
  

  Researchers from ENDURE’s Scottish partner, the James Hutton Institute (JHI), have unveiled new criteria for measuring the risk of late blight in potato crops, which will help to improve the UK’s alert system from 2017.

• EUCLID reports “significant progress”
  

  The second newsletter from the EUCLID project (Europe China Lever for IPM Demonstration) is now available, following hot on the heels of EUCLID’s annual meeting and providing an update from the four-year project’s activities.