A seven-strong team of ENDURE scientists presented ongoing Integrated Pest Management activities in Europe at the 18th International Plant Protection Congress which was held in Berlin, Germany from August 24 to 27, 2015.
The team comprised Antoine Messéan, Christine Poncet, Jay Ram Lamichhane and Nicolas Munier-Jolain (INRA, France), Per Kudsk and Mogens S. Hovmøller (Aarhus University, Denmark) and Silke Dachbrodt-Saaydeh (Julius Kühn-Institut, Germany) and provided insight on a range of IPM topics, ranging from how IPM research and development is organised and the challenges it faces to the results of crop-specific experimentation.
Antoine Messéan gave a presentation about the ongoing IPM networking of researchers and funders in Europe. He emphasised that among numerous challenges IPM faces in Europe, lack of budget, knowledge transfer into practice and communication both at country level and between Member States are major obstacles hindering research and implementation.
He explained that a large number of actors are involved in the crop protection sector and they need to be coordinated through effective communications and dynamic collaboration to make any IPM action successful and to overcome challenges through transnational collaboration in Europe.
He highlighted how the ongoing networking of researchers (ENDURE) and funders ( C-IPM) are committed to creating added value and synergies by coordinating national research and extension efforts and by pooling national resources. The aims of such networking are the identification of future research and development priorities in Europe, providing recommendations on national and jointly executed European research in order to ensure food security while simultaneously adopting sustainable crop protection strategies.
Christine Poncet gave a talk entitled ‘Advanced IPM in greenhouses: a smart balance between ecological services and innovating high tech’. She explained how greenhouse crop production today constitutes the ideal candidate for a cutting age IPM approach. She highlighted that due to their intensive nature, greenhouse systems allow a wide range of control and monitoring tools relevant to precision horticulture to be set up. In particular, the goal of ‘pest-free greenhouses’ through the development, use and integration of early diagnostics and precise application technology, is well adapted to high-tech (in other words, closed or semi-closed) greenhouses.
Despite the potential of ‘healthy greenhouses’, low-tech greenhouses, with limited barriers to pest entry, are the most common greenhouses nearly all over the world. She explained how this kind of agro-ecosystem is also the most suitable candidate for in-depth investigation into the ecological foundation of biological control strategies as already demonstrated within the INTERREG Healthy Greenhouse project and the PURE project. Finally, Christine also emphasised the role of knowledge and technology transfer from low-tech greenhouse systems to high-tech ones. This will allow a resilient ecological balance between crop, pathogens, beneficial organisms and environmental factors to be achieved.
Jay Ram Lamichhane gave a talk about the impact of climate change on European agriculture, reporting on some practical examples of pest range shifts due to increasing global temperatures. He highlighted how climate change is increasingly perceived as one of the major constraints that limit agricultural productivity and how IPM R&D should address these challenges.
He emphasised that while climate change affects agriculture, agriculture in general and crop protection in particular have an important role to play in mitigating the effects of climate change through, for example, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, he highlighted the need for a diversification of current plant protection strategies to mitigate the effects of climate change. To this end he stressed the importance of implementing priorities and action plans which ENDURE has identified to prepare for future climate-resilient agriculture in Europe.
Nicolas Munier-Jolain discussed the diversity of experimental approaches used for the field testing of IPM-based cropping systems in Europe. He explained that field experiments are required to analyze the interactions between control measures, and to evaluate the sustainability of IPM-based cropping systems (CS).
In particular, he presented a recently built network of European agronomists managing field experiments at the CS level (IPM-EASE). This network is aiming to share data and expertise to enhance our knowledge on IPM-based CS. He explained how the comparison of methodologies highlighted a diversity of approaches in CS design and experimental layouts across Europe. This diversity is partly related to the research context and objectives. Some experiments intend to explore really innovative strategies and gain scientific knowledge about how such innovative CS behave, while others are designed to provide quickly adoptable solutions for local farmers.
Nicolas also clarified that while in some research programmes the CS being tested are regularly revised, in other cases CS are kept stable across years to evaluate long-term cumulative effects. He stressed how the concept of the CS itself is viewed differently among scientists, and how this affects protocols. He concluded that networking at the European level constitutes a useful exchange platform with the potential of scientific added value for CS experiments and that the IPM-EASE network remains fully open for anyone wishing to join it.
Per Kudsk presented the results of long-term experiments, conducted to evaluate two IPM strategies (IPM1 and IPM2) against conventional practice (CP), in winter wheat-based and maize-based cropping systems across Europe. He reported that in winter wheat pests were effectively controlled in CP and IPM1, while unsatisfactory control was sometimes observed in IPM2. IPM1 yields were either comparable to or lower than CP while IPM2 yields were generally lower. Pesticide use was significantly lower in IPM1 and IPM2 compared to CP. In some cases, yield losses could be attributed to changes in cropping practice while in other cases it was caused by insufficient pest control. In particular, variety mixtures and inter-row cultivation allowed pest pressure to be reduced in winter oilseed rape. While omitting the use of pesticides can result in pronounced yield losses in winter wheat, IPM makes it possible to reduce pesticide use without significant yield penalties.
Overall, CP provided better weed control and higher maize yields than IPM2 whereas no differences in weed control and yields were observed between CP and IPM1 at two out of the three locations. Overall, the IPM tools tested in the on-farm experiments provided sufficient weed control without significant differences in yields and greatly reduced the reliance on herbicides.
Per concluded that IPM implementation and success in maize-based systems depends on specific local conditions as well as on the level of pest pressure. Therefore, the knowledge of the field history, in terms of pests and their monitoring during the growing season, will determine the choice of IPM tools and the level of IPM implementation.
Mogens Støvring Hovmøller discussed the need for coordinated European efforts to fight invasive crop pathogens, presenting the case of invasive yellow rust fungi on wheat, Puccinia spp. He said that the recent emergence of invasive rust fungi on wheat, potentially of non-European origin, has demonstrated the need for understanding pathogen diversity, spread and evolution at larger scales. Aggressive strains of yellow rust have resulted in escalating disease epidemics, so far peaking in 2014 where significant losses and additional fungicide sprays were observed in many European countries. The epidemics also spread to new areas in southern and eastern Europe, where yellow rust was previously absent or scarce, and previous long-term effective host resistance has been overcome.
Mogens described how that the analysis of 2,298 isolates sampled in seven countries between 2000 and 2013 provided insights into the origin and level of diversity of yellow rust in Europe. In particular, at least four race groups of exotic origin were identified in the post-2010 populations, with significant genetic divergence between race groups from the pre-existing European population. These race groups were of non-European origin being genetically related to sexual recombining populations from the pathogen centre of diversity in Asia.
He stressed the importance of Europe-wide collaboration and compilation of data into a single dataset in a common database which makes it possible to identify the current invasion at an early stage, and to assess its implications at field level in many countries. He concluded that future collaborative efforts at the European scale should be continued and strengthened for timely early warning of potential invasions of new variants of important crop pathogens with the capacity to spread very far within a very short period of time.
Silke Dachbrodt-Saaydeh presented the results of work entitled ‘Economic and environmental evaluation of IPM strategies in winter wheat and maize cropping systems’ based on three-year on-station experiments. Here, also, two IPM levels (IPM1 and IPM2) were compared against the conventional crop protection system (CS). The winter wheat and maize systems were tested in six different regions in northern Europe and three regions of central-southern Europe, respectively.
The ex-post assessment of the sustainability of IPM systems was conducted using an adapted version of the DEXiPM model, including SYNOPS for the environmental risk assessment and a cost-benefit assessment. Results of this work showed that, overall, IPM strategies had lower environmental impact mainly due to significantly reduced pesticide use in both IPM systems. The economic sustainability of IPM systems depended on possible yield reductions, changes in costs of IPM tools and methods and type of crops in the rotation compared to conventional systems. For both winter wheat and maize across the tested regions, yields in IPM1 were comparable to or in some cases lower than CS while yields in IPM2 were generally lower.
The results indicate that IPM systems can achieve a reduction in environmental risks. The economic results may deviate from conventional systems depending on the region and the possible yield penalties of the new IPM elements.
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