Europe
June 27, 2011

Back in November, the heads of 14 ENDURE partner institutions pledged to pool resources to “ensure the sustainability of crop protection in Europe through scientific excellence, interdisciplinary research, and international partnership”, writes Antoine Messéan, ENDURE Coordinator.

It has been six months since Pierre Ricci passed on to me the coordination of ENDURE. Six months since ENDURE as a self-funded network has gone into operation. Naturally, the question in everyone’s mind since then is whether ENDURE will make good on its promise to continue as a productive network even in the absence of its FP7 Network of Excellence grant.

It is surely a challenge to have 14 research, extension and higher education institutes continue to invest in a network where both decisions and benefits are shared. The outcome is still open, but if abundance of new proposals is any indication of success, we are doing very well. Indeed, beyond updating existing ENDURE tools, there are a number of new and original initiatives in the pipeline:

• ENDURE launched a study on robustness of cropping systems and anticipation strategies vis-à-vis invasive pest species and climate change. The initiative is a collaboration with the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (a Joint Research Centre of the European Commission) and will culminate in a European seminar and the production of a JRC Technical Report offering policy and research recommendations.
   
• ENDURE supported a proposal from the French Ministries of Agriculture and Research to create a new Collaborative Working Group under the Standing Committee of Agricultural Research, a consultative body offering advice to the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation. The concept of providing a European forum for exchange and identification of joint research and development priorities to facilitate IPM was supported by 18 countries. The first meeting took place in May in Brussels.
   
• Under the Polish Presidency of the EU, ENDURE is co-organising a high-visibility seminar on IPM in East-Central Europe and the Baltics at our IHAR partner’s venue in Radzikow, Poland in September. We expect this event to mark the initiation of new working relations between ENDURE and members of the crop protection community in that region.
   
• We are moving ahead with the concept of multi-site experiments spanning several countries. We are currently exploring the feasibility of creating a lasting experimental set-up on wheat-based systems and integrated weed management among four partners to begin with.
   
• We are also looking beyond Europe, currently identifying areas for collaboration with research institutes in Brazil and Argentina, and recently submitted a proposal to organise an international session on networking approaches at the next IPM symposium in the USA.

These examples show that we are well on our way to becoming a platform for the launch of new European and international initiatives and that we can become significant players in crop protection when it comes to joint work, making resources more widely available, and facilitating cross-national exchange between researchers, advisers, policy advisers, and programme funders.

Website: http://www.endure-network.eu

Published: June 27, 2011