All the news

• Advisers: join online forum to share IPM knowledge
  

  Following April’s ENDURE Network of Advisers workshop in Paris, France, VfL, the Danish Agricultural Knowledge Centre, has created an online forum to enable farm advisers to share knowledge, results and experiences to tackle pest control challenges and improve their Integrated Pest Management practices.

• Latest update on ENDURE scientific papers
  

  The list of ENDURE papers accepted for publication in scientific journals has been updated. This year's papers cover topics such as multi-criteria assessment tools, landscape ecology, consumer willingness to pay for IPM, virulence dynamics of pathogens and deployment of host resistance, and biofumigation.

• Sign up: ENDURE summer school on agroecology
  

  ENDURE is conducting its fourth Summer School October 7-12, 2012 in Volterra, Italy. The five-day course will focus on ‘Agroecological engineering for crop protection’ and will bring together up to 20 PhD-level students. To ensure diversity among participating students, ENDURE is offering three grants covering local expenses (food, lodging and participation in the course) – travel costs are not covered. Read on if you wish to participate…

• INRA programme cuts across borders
  

  To reconcile environmental goals with efficient crop protection, research needs to broaden its scope along spatial, temporal and organisational dimensions. That is the challenge that INRA’s new meta-programme Sustainable Management of Crop Health (SMaCH) is taking on. Olivier Le Gall (pictured right), who heads SMaCH, seeks to develop research on crop health that is more international and cuts across natural and human sciences.

• Necessary minimum in Germany
  

  In its quest toward reducing environmental risks associated with pesticide use by 25% by 2020, Germany has developed a new assessment tool, the “necessary minimum”. The concept, which defines a level of pesticide use above which further use would be unnecessary, is not as simple or simplistic as it seems.

• ENDURE and PURE in International Innovation
  

  ENDURE and the FP7 Integrated Project PURE feature in the latest edition of International Innovation. Interviews with PURE Coordinator Françoise Lescourret and ENDURE participants Pierre Ricci, Antoine Messéan and Marco Barzman, address in everyday language the principles behind Integrated Pest Management, the current situation in plant protection in Europe and the bottlenecks and knowledge gaps impeding the reduction of reliance on pesticides.

• New Advisers refreshes advice
  

  IPM relies on new technical content but also on effective learning approaches to innovation. ‘New Advisers' is a project that will promote new ways of delivering farm advice. Discussion groups, problem-based learning, clear vision, and forum theatre are among the learning methods that will be tested by farm advisors in eight European countries. ENDURE welcomes this refreshing input and will collaborate with New Advisers to build synergies between the two groups.

• IPM workshop for European advisers is on
  

  Advising for IPM: New Challenges
  Paris, April 11-12, 2012

  European farm advisers are invited!

• Pisa conference features robots & ICT
  

  The University of Pisa is holding the first international conference on "Robotics and associated High-technologies and Equipment for Agriculture" in Pisa, Italy, on September 19-21, 2012. Deadline for contributions is February 28.

• Shedding light on national pesticide initiatives
  

  ENDURE researchers focused on providing scientific support to policy have looked back into history at a number of national initiatives to reduce pesticide use or risk.