Breeding for integrated pest management – advancing resilience through innovative varieties

In October 2024, IPMorama, a 4-year Horizon Europe project, was kicked off. It brings together seventeen partners from ten European countries with a common goal to improve the state of the art in variety-centric integrated pest management (IPM) for important diseases in wheat, potatoes as well as soybean, pea and white lupin. FiBL Switzerland’s plant breeding team will focus on the lupin disease anthracnose.

The IPMorama project is crucial for advancing integrated pest management (IPM) in key crops like wheat, potatoes and legumes by generating tools to fast-track the breeding of disease- and pest­-resilient varieties, while simultaneously developing IPM practice methodologies that maximise their utility by integrating knowledge of host resistance with pathogen virulence. The effect of this innovative approach will be to reduce pesticide reliance, thereby securing agricultural productivity whilst addressing the ambitious sustainability goals demanded by EU citizens. IPMorama aims to create a  "community of practice" that involves the entire crop production value chain from breeders, through farmers to consumers and wider society. To achieve this, the project will not only develop advanced technologies for breeding and IPM but also pursue social engagement to ensure effective policy-making and stakeholder collaboration, ultimately contributing to healthier soil, water quality and sustainable agriculture.

The consortium at the kick-off meeting in Dublin, Ireland. (Photo: Teagasc)

Kick-off meeting

With the kick-off meeting held at the beginning of October in Dublin, Ireland, the IPMorama project started its mission. The meeting was hosted by the coordinating entity Teagasc, Agriculture and Food Development Authority at Teagasc Ashtown Food Research Centre.

What to expect in the future

The IPMorama paradigm for the next generation of IPM practices is based on the following 5 specific components:

1. Development of IPM-centric varieties: Enhanced crop varieties with integrated pest and pathogen resistance, specifically for wheat (rust pathogens), potatoes (blight), and legumes like soybeans (Diaporthe/Phomopsis complex), peas (broomrape), and white lupin (anthracnose).

2. Genetic insights for breeders: Advanced understanding of the genetic composition of pest and pathogen resistance in key crops, which will assist breeders in targeting and assembling effective resistance traits.

3. Landscape-level pathogen mapping: Detailed maps of pathogen virulence, enabling precise and location-specific IPM strategies that exploit the resistance traits of different crop varieties.

4. Innovative IPM tools: Creation of practical tools such as crowdsourcing apps and vulnerability maps that farmers and stakeholders can use to monitor and manage pest risks across different regions and timeframes.

5. Stakeholder engagement: A robust knowledge infrastructure for actors across the agricultural value chain, promoting the competent use and scale-up of variety-centric IPM solutions.

IPMorama seeks to make significant contributions to Europe’s visions and goals as set by the EU Green Deal and Farm to Fork Strategy (F2F). The project aims to achieve a larger societal impact by integrating into the project actors including;  research institutions, scientists, breeders, seed companies, plant variety testers, agrichemical producers networks such as EPI-AGRI, National Rural Network (NRN), European Network for Rural Development (ENRD), farmers and many more, ultimately leading to greater acceptance and uptake of the solutions developed.

FiBL’s role in the project

FiBL Switzerland is part of the legume team of IPMorama, focussing on the white lupin-anthracnose pathosystem. The plant breeding team will develop molecular breeding tools for Marker Assisted Selection (MAS) and Genomic Selection (GS) of antracnose resistance in white lupin, together with the Bavarian State Research Center for Agriculture (LfL) in Germany and the Council for Agricultural Research and Economics (CREA-ZA) in Italy. From the pathogen side, the plant breeding team will collect isolates of Colletotrichum lupini (the causal agent of anthracnose) from different lupin cultivation sites in Europe and monitor their virulence. Further, the team will make FiBL’s C. lupini strain collection available to the research community as result of the project.

A white lupin plant showing anthracnose symptoms. (Photo: FiBL, Andràs Patyi)

The main pillar of integrated management strategy for lupin anthracnose will be the delivery of breeding material with increased resistance (based on phenotypic and genotypic selection). FiBL will complement this pillar with the use of treatments allowed in organic farming that can help to minimise the primary infection in seed lots as no full resistance is known in white lupin. Organic farmers will be involved in testing at field scale these integrated management solutions.

The IPMorama project is funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme. Associated country partners are Funded by SERI & UKRI.