New Horizon for Sustainable Crop Protection and a Spotlight Interview You Shouldn’t Miss
In the face of climate change, rising pest pressures and the urgent need to reduce chemical pesticide use, European agriculture stands at a crossroads. How can we feed a growing population while protecting biodiversity, reducing environmental harm and meeting ambitious sustainability targets? The answer requires innovation at every level of the food system, from farm practices to the genetics of the crops themselves. This is where the IPMorama project comes into the spotlight.
What IPMorama Aims to Achieve
The project tackles some of Europe’s most important arable crops, wheat, potatoes and a range of grain legumes (including soybean, pea and white lupin) and the pests and diseases that limit their productive potential. These include rust pathogens in wheat, late blight in potatoes and several fungal pathogens and parasitic weeds in legumes.
IPMorama’s strategy revolves around four key pillars:
Understanding genetic resistance: deciphering the genetic basis of resistance traits in target crops to help breeders stack effective resistance genes into new varieties.
Landscape-level vulnerability mapping: tracking the distribution and virulence of pests and pathogens across Europe to inform where and how resistant varieties will perform best.
Developing IPM practices: integrating resistance with ecological, cultural and biological management tools to create robust, scalable pest management pathways.
Upskilling stakeholders: equipping breeders, advisors, farmers and value-chain actors with the knowledge and tools they need to adopt and spread variety-centric IPM solutions.
Together, these efforts aim to reduce pesticide reliance, support organic and low-input farming systems, and enhance resilience across agroecosystems. The outcome is not just science in the lab, but science in action on farms, fields and supply chains.
Listen and Learn: IPMorama in the Innovation Spotlight Series
To bring these ideas to a broader audience, our Project Manager, Sara Dunny Fox, from the Coordinating team at Teagasc, was a guest at CAP Network Ireland Podcast (Innovation Spotlight), which dives deep into the project goals and the people driving them forward. Produced by CAP Network Ireland as part of its Innovation Spotlight series, this interview highlights how IPMorama fits into wider efforts to innovate in agriculture across Europe.
The Innovation Spotlight series is designed to showcase initiatives that offer solutions to pressing agricultural challenges in Ireland and beyond. IPMorama’s appearance in this series underscores the relevance of sustainable crop protection not just in research circles, but in policy, practice and community conversations about the future of farming.
In the interview, Sara explained:
• Why integrated pest management must evolve beyond current practices.
• How breeding for disease and pest resistance can unlock new opportunities for growers.
• The importance of collaboration across countries, sectors and disciplines in driving innovation.
Whether you’re a researcher, farmer, agronomist, policymaker or curious citizen, the conversation provides an accessible entry point to the IPMorama mission and the broader context of European sustainable agriculture.
We invite you to listen to the interview, explore the project insights and join the conversation about how we can cultivate a more resilient, sustainable future for European agriculture.