KUDSK , Per

Climate change is increasingly perceived as one of the major constraints that limit agricultural productivity. Crop losses due to climate change could be direct, such as damages through flooding or storms, or indirect such as altered distribution of crop pests. The real impact of climate change at global level is yet uncertain and likely...

Agriculture faces the challenge of meeting increasing food demands whilst simultaneously satisfying ever stringent sustainability goals. Taken together with the ever increasing rate of integrated globalisation and other anthropogenic impacts, this challenge is further complicated by climate change. Climate change is indeed increasingly...

EU agriculture is currently in transition from conventional crop protection to integrated pest management (IPM). Because biocontrol is a key component of IPM, many European countries recently have intensified their national efforts on biocontrol research and innovation (R&I), although such initiatives are often fragmented. The operational...

The FP7 PURE project aimed (i) to provide practical IPM solutions – combinations of tactics and strategies – to reduce reliance on pesticides, based on integrative research; and (ii) to deliver scientific knowledge to design future IPM solutions, based on innovative research in challenging fields: pest evolution, plant-pest-enemy interactions,...

The use of pesticides made it possible to increase yields, simplify cropping systems, and forego more complicated crop protection strategies. Over-reliance on chemical control, however, is associated with contamination of ecosystems and undesirable health effects. The future of crop production is now also threatened by emergence of pest...