EUCLID (Europe-China Lever for Integrated Pest Management Demonstration), which brings together 18 partners from Europe and China, earlier this year held its first demonstration trial for agricultural advisers and technicians from technical institutes and biocontrol companies. This was held at the INRA (French National Institute for Agricultural Research) site in Avignon, southern France, and gave participants the opportunity to compare lettuce crops grown conventionally (with chemical control) and those grown using an IPM approach including EUCLID innovations (almost 100% use of biocontrol products).

EUCLID reports: “Participants shared a consensual impression that IPM practices with nearly no chemical control provided encouraging and much better than expected results. Exchanges onsite also provided very useful feedback, including suggestions for the further improvement of the IPM scheme in view of future EUCLID trials.”

EUCLID’s IPM packages comprise three Excel-based files (one for each crop) “in which agronomical, chemical and biological strategies are indicated and integrated with novel solutions developed by EUCLID. Indications on the limits of use of chemical pesticides are also considered.

“These IPM packages allow users to consider various combinations of measures to control pests and diseases, and are particularly useful for farmers in China that would like to produce according to EU standards.”

EUCLID also reports promising results from its assessments of new methods that can be used in IPM approaches. These include, for example, the use of new predator from the mirid bug family for the control of tomato leaf miner (greater efficiency than the previously used mirid bug)  and micro-biocontrol agents developed by EUCLID partner Agri New Tech (ANT) for the control of various soil and air-borne pathogens in tomato, grape and lettuce crops. ANT has also developed a fortified compost to control soil-borne pathogens which has proved to be very efficient by project partners working on tomato diseases.

Other EUCLID partners have been working on new techniques (gene-specific dsRNAs and entomovectoring), while another group has focused its research on the effect of plant richness and environment on the presence of naturally occurring predators and parasitoids. Some partners working on crop richness design have reported increased tomato yields and parasitism rates of aphids, while other studies have shown the important effect of calendula flowers around tomato greenhouses on the presence of a key predator of whitefly and tomato moths. These techniques are currently being field tested.

For more information:

• Read more about EUCLID’s IPM packages here
• Read more about EUCLID’s work on new methods here 
• Read more about EUCLID’s lettuce demonstration here