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Press Info item.
05/05/2011
Reducing the use of pesticides with integrated pest management: launch of the European project PURE
To meet the demand for food and preserve environmental resources, agriculture must increase food production and quality while decreasing its ecological footprint. In this context, the European project PURE, for Pesticide Use-and-Risk reduction in European farming systems with integrated pest management, has been launched. This new 4-year project*, coordinated by INRA, associates 14 European research institutes or universities, 2 extension organizations, 5 industries and 1 project management consulting company. It will facilitate the adoption of innovative integrated pest management solutions.
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Ensuring sustainability and competitiveness with reduced pesticide inputs is a major challenge. PURE will provide integrated pest management solutions and a practical toolbox for their implementation in key European farming systems (annual arable and vegetable, perennial, and protected crops) in which reduction of pesticide use and better control of pests will have major effects.
For each of six selected farming systems**, PURE will combine existing methods with new tools and technologies into novel integrated pest management solutions addressing the biological, agronomic and economic diversity in Europe. The solutions will range from easy-to-adopt combinations of tactical control methods to more ambitious solutions involving strategic changes at the farm level. With the participation of industries, PURE will exploit recent advances in emerging technologies, plant-pest-enemy interactions, soil and landscape ecology and pest evolution to provide integrated pest management solutions with innovative diagnostic and decision support systems, physical devices and bio-products, strategies for ecological pest regulation and improved durability of control methods.
PURE will test the efficacy, practicability and relevance of solutions under the agro-ecosystems and farming conditions of the main broad European regions by on-station and on-farm experiments and will perform a comparative assessment of their environmental, economic and social sustainability.
By jointly involving researchers and the key actors of pest management (farmers, advisors, policy makers and actors of the food supply chain) in design and assessment, PURE will facilitate the adoption of these solutions. PURE will thereby contribute to reduce the risks to human health and the environment caused by the use and dependence on pesticides and will facilitate the implementation of the legislation on pesticides.
* PURE is launched following the ENDURE network which worked for 4 years in exploring possibilities of improving methods to control crop pests and to make agricultural systems less dependent on the use of pesticides. The results of ENDURE were presented at an international conference in Paris in November 2010.
** wheat-based rotations, maize-based rotations, field vegetables, pomefruit, grapevine, protected tomatos.
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Written by :
INRA press service, phone: +33 (0)1 42 75 91 69
Contacts :
Françoise LESCOURRET
PURE project coordinator
tel.: 0+33 (0)4 32 72 24 53
francoise.lescourret@avignon.inra.fr
Plants and Cropping Systems in Horticulture
Provence-Côte d'Azur Research Centre
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