“The field is in dire need of more biological control products, so you better make sure in an early stage of development that a particular product has practical potential,” Philippe, from France’s National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA), tells the newsletter.
During the interview, he notes the large drop in synthetic crop protection products available to farmers over the past 25 years, and the introduction of biological or other alternatives to replace them. “Using the biocontrol products that farmers do have at their disposal is usually more complex than spraying chemicals, and protection is not always as efficacious,” he says. “Optimal deployment of biocontrol products requires some understanding of their - often intricate - modes of action and solid knowledge on the key factors that influence their efficacy.
“Therefore, public research, industry and advisory services also need to cooperate on improving the acquisition of this crucial knowledge and its delivery to the farmers in an operational form. Farmers need detailed user guides or decision support systems that facilitate the optimal utilisation of the products.”
The BIOCOMES project (‘New biological products for sustainable farming and forestry’) comprises 13 industrial partners and 14 research institutes and universities from 14 countries 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.
Elsewhere in its latest newsletter, it reports on how the composition of the bacterial community around rape seed strongly affects the vulnerability of the plant to pathogens. This research has been conducted by Daria Rybakova, from the BIOCOMES partner Graz University of Technology, Austria, and colleagues, and is published in the latest issue of the journal Microbiome .
The newsletter also examines how entomopathogenic nematodes can be bred for better endurance and therefore better compete with synthetic products. Specifically, it examines how the Heterorhabditis bacteriophora nematode may be bred and selected for better resistance against environmental stress and longer shelf life, drawing on a lab study conducted by researchers from BIOCOMES partner e-nema and colleagues from the universities of Kiel, Germany, and Ghent, Belgium. This work has been published in the latest issue of Nematology .
Finally, the newsletter offers a slide share presentation on brown rot caused by Monilinia spp., which is one of the economically most important fungal diseases of stone fruit in Europe. The presentation explains more about brown rot and the BIOCOMES activities designed to find a sustainable biocontrol product to control the disease.
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