Europe and China join forces for IPM project

A new four-year Integrated Pest Management (IPM) project has been launched, bringing together 18 partners from Europe and China and focusing on three crops chosen for their economic importance: tomatoes, leafy vegetables and grapes.
 

EUCLID, which stands for Europe China Lever for IPM Demonstration, aims “to secure food production for the increasing worldwide population while developing sustainable production methodologies to fight pests with an Integrated Pest Management approach (IPM), to be used in European and Chinese agriculture.”
 

EUCLID, which is a four-year Research and Innovation Action funded by the European Commission under Horizon 2020, believes its research will have impacts on crops beyond those it intends to study. The project will be considering the entire food product chain from agriculture through to final consumers and, indeed, its partners include retail giant Carrefour’s French and Chinese divisions. French ENDURE and PURE partners INRA and ACTA are also part of EUCLID and PURE’s tools will be available to the new project.
 

EUCLID’s aims and objectives:
 

• Deliver the simultaneous optimisation of current pest management methods and the development of novel ones

• Promote rapid adoption through the design of IPM packages

• Reduce the dependence of European and Chinese farmers on chemical pesticides

• Optimise existing management methods for key agricultural pests

• Develop novel protection methods taking into account end users’ needs

• Assess the innovative candidate pest management and newly designed IPM solutions

• Disseminate knowledge to key stakeholders
 

• Effective solutions for prevention and management of Invasive Alien Species (IAS)

• Scientific support to EU policies

• Significant economic gains and avoided losses for European and Chinese agriculture

• Increased product quality and lower environmental impact

• Science-based tools for developing strategies to improve productivity and resilience of agriculture in the context of evolving climate; impact on a range of agricultural production and risk management practices
 

The project was officially launched on September 29, 2015, with a Kick-off Meeting held at INRA (France’s National Institute for Agricultural Research). The EUCLID website currently offers an overview of the project and will be updated in the coming weeks.