ENDURE scientific officer Jay Ram Lamichhane (pictured right) was invited as a guest lecturer for the orientation week of  the European Joint Master Degree in Plant Health in Sustainable Cropping Systems.

The event ran from September 26 to 29 and was organised by programme coordinator Professor Josep Armengol Forti, from the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain. The Master programme, which is co-funded by the European Union’s Erasmus+ scheme, aims to promote the mobility of students from developing countries who are interested in the topic of IPM to Europe.

More than two dozen students, mainly from developing countries, participated in the orientation week, which was composed of a number of activities including plenary talks, field visits, intercultural awareness workshops, and questions and debate sessions.

It was a remarkable experience to share the current state of the art of IPM R&I  in Europe with students from non-European countries, especially those coming from the developing world, said Jay Ram.

“I was impressed by the motivation of students in learning about IPM in general and their level of awareness about the role of IPM in addressing the increasingly important issues of food security and food safety,” he added. “The students were very much interested in understanding what is actually happening in the European Union in terms of new legislation regarding crop protection and the major challeges IPM R&I faces in Europe and how such challeges are addressed.”

Responding to their questions, Jay Ram clearly emphasised the role of networking across borders and the need to adopt interdisciplinary research to address major IPM challenges in crop protection. ENDURE was presented as a telling example in this regard.

The Plant Health in Sustainable Cropping Systems European Master Degree (PlantHealth) is organised by a consortium of six universities from four European countries: Montpellier SupAgro, Agrocampus Ouest and AgroParis Tech (France), University of Göttingen (Germany), University of Padova (Italy) and Universitat Politècnica de València (Spain). Applications for the next intake can be made until January 31, 2017.

For more information:

• Visit the PlantHealth website