Folienplanung

So yes, the point will be an introduction of the plant protection -- of the pyramid for the first part. Then we will go for ecosystem based management approach of the pyramid. So the bottom part and then we'll focus on the top part. And in both of them we will give you some examples. And I will conclude the presentation with the national list that we have, and which I'm working with to have an idea of what is it.

So let's start with the first one and let's start with the the question what do plant diseases -- how do plant diseases develop? Maybe most of you know there is the interaction of three different diseases or different part of that triangle that they bring to diseases on plants. And the three parts are the pathogen, the host and the environment. And yes, the host could be from different variety, age, different genetic homogeneity. Then the pathogen could have different virulence, quantity, type, inoculum, presence of different vectors, and environment is the temperature, humidity and daylight. And only when all of three are in the right moment you have diseases. It seems that it's kind of difficult to have diseases, but in actually or in reality is not the case. As you may see outside in the world, that is lot of diseases occurring every day. This is why because sometimes pathogens can also, so as you see, as I told you, it's they are limited in a few occasions, but they can survive in a spore or sclerotia -- so resisting structure in the environment. And they are waiting for the right moment to infect plants.

So then we move on and okay, now we know what we need to have a disease and how to regulate then plant disease in organic farming. So as you may know, in organic, there is no -- synthetic pesticides are not allowed. And what is very important is to use indirect measurements or try to think about your crop or your plants, like in a, completely in an environment. So don't only look at the diseases and your plants, but think about the plants that you have in your orchard, but also the insects on the soil, microorganism in the soil also, but also microorganisms and insects in the environment around the plants that play an important role to protect or spread diseases around. Yes. And now we go further, and I will introduce the plant protection

pyramid, which could be maybe known. The bottom part is the preventive part and the top one is the curative. In organic farming it's very important to focus on the preventive part. So in the bottom one to work a lot on this, to avoid or decrease the amount of products that we have to apply afterwards. So to give a cure on your plant, it's better to prevent any, any way in these in plant diseases as to give a cure. Because you try to forecast or you try to be in advance the pathogens. Because if you have to cure, it's too late, and then you can, you are trying to catch up with the pathogen and usually they are faster than us. So in the bottom part we have natural measurements like your extensification of land use, the biotope networks If we move a bit up, then we have a different cultural management practice like co-production, a different type of cultivar resistance, a resistance timing allocation. And then if we move a little bit further, it's functional biodiversity. So you can you try to make your environmental resistance with some wild flower strips or using an antagonist in in your crop. And then for the curative part, usually we use some so it's used some inundative or inoculative biocontrol organisms or release of beneficial organisms like insects. And the last part, the biocontrol, the direct biocontrol or control is to use insecticides, pheromones or physical measures to really kill somehow your pathogens.

Okay. Let's then move on to the second part. So the importance of the ecosystem-based pest control.

So this as I said before, the the preventive part or the bottom part of the pyramid, the pyramid. And as I told before, this is indirect measurement. So to try to avoid a pathogen inside of your crop.

On the bottom part, as you may see, there is really the environment. So where and how you locate your orchard when you have the possibility is very important if there is a different type of flowers, herbs, shrubs, different flower strips, or what is located near to a forest or not -- location change a lot in the disease control. This is why -- because you can, if you have a complete monoculture or a big monoculture, when the disease is inside of your cultivar or orchard, it just finds all what you need to spread. Because you just have to reproduce on a leaf or fruits or vegetables. And once you produce spores, they just have to go next a few metres away, you have another plant to ready to infect. And it spreads, it produce a lot of spores or, or pathogen or mycelia, and then it's very difficult to control it. You have to really kill it. While if there is some barriers in between, it's for the pathogen more difficult to

spread around. In the second part, so a step further in the pyramid you can use some, you can change a little bit a little bit your host, for example, introducing some or crossing for resistant variety. For example here we have a Blauacher or Otava. Otava is resistant to apple scab or a little bit resistant of apple scalp with a gene. This gives resistance to apple scab, but for example is not resisting against Marssonina and other pathogens. Integrating a lot of different resistance in one cultivar is very complicated and takes a lot of years. And always one single strategy is not working. So only one single gene, or only working with a resistant variety is not a solution. You have also to integrate, as I said before, the different environmental strategy or a construction strategy, but also integrating with protection or application of fungicides or pesticide. For example, on the right side of the slide, you can see in the Downy mildew on grapevines and you see there is some resistance, so certain resistance to Downy mildew, but you still apply some copper to avoid that in a few years, your resistance is, it's gone.

The other type of cultural management practices are, for example, how you physically protect your, and in the middle we have, for example, three different way of protecting your orchard. Like it's standard to use the net against hail. But you can put some temporary protection or a year protection, like a tunnel to protect your crop against the rain. This will decrease the amount of some diseases, but unfortunately, you will then maybe increase some other pathogen that don't like a lot your mid to high humidity. And then we have some strategy that alternate or to kind of find a solution in between. Like on the left there is a net to avoid insects that spread diseases. Or you have this mobile weather shelter -- Control shelter -- that they open when it's raining and they close when there is a sunny day. Or you can also combine it, like we have in here at Frick, a photovoltaic panel that protect your orchard. And at the same time it produces some electricity. But everything has some disadvantage and advantage. And you have to find always the best strategy of your orchard, looking for diseases that are present around, and looking at the, the different possibilities that you have.

Now moving a little bit further in the pyramid. We go in the functional biodiversity. And this is one of, one of the biggest experiments that we had here at FiBL some years ago. You see that we use some different resistant varieties of apple and that they were that the, the distance, the distance between the plants were higher than conventional, and in between the plants we put some flower strip,

some rock pile or nest for insects. And the point is to acquire insects, to protect your crop against other insects and avoid spreading of diseases and or animal like predators that catch some detractors on

your field. And in the same experiment, we also then tested some in two different block. One was an application of bio control organism, and the other one was a release of of so one was insect and the other one was a, was a bacteria to, to add on the top of it another layer of protection. And we also thought that the soil with a compost-driven fertilisation.

And you can see here it's a bit maybe full, this slide, but it's really explain the complexity of the systems and that you have to really go for covering or or protecting your orchard in a different way. Also protecting, you prevent the disease or spreading around.

Yes. And now we go a little bit further on the pyramid and we move to the curative part.

So these are direct measure, which are. Yes. The two top. So one, the two points. So inundative biocontrol or direct biocontrol.

And here we have some examples. So we have the microorganisms like bacteria and fungi. Some bacterium Pseudomonas and Trichoderma, some example. Or the pest like some microorganism and entomopathogenic Nematodes and parasites and predators, then maybe Dani will explain a little bit more later in the presentation. In the next presentation.

And yes. So I've worked the mechanism out of biocontrol. There is basically four main ways of protecting. So you have a competition for nutrients and space. So you apply your bacteria or fungus on top of your plant or on your soil, and then they should occupy the space and avoid that pathogen, have the possibility to grow in effect. Or they can act as an antagonist, producing some antimicrobial compounds which act as killing or avoiding that the other organisms grow. There is also the possibility of hyper parasitism. So your product is a hyper parasite -- other organism killing or feeding from them. Or you can at last point induce an immune resistance, a system in your plant. So your activating system of the plants that acts against other pathogens or attack of

pathogens. Of authorised biocontrol organism may be most of you know already. And you see there is based on different fungi or bacteria. It's there are kind of quite new, so quite known in different products and they`re against some just fungi or Sclerotinia which are the resistant part that remain in the soil of a fungi. Or they`re against some potato disease or, yes, different pests. And now we come to the last,

so the unpopular level of the pyramid. The top -- the top one. And despite its unpopular, it's sometimes very, is crucial for protecting your crop. It's, let's say one of the last, is the last things that you can do to protect. And this is why you should not go much there. So you should prevent the disease spreading in your in your orchards. The more you protect or the more you avoid the diseases inside, the better it is to have a good production at the end of the years. And yes the natural, they are only natural substances for organic. They could be from mineral origin, plant proteins, plant extracts or microbial metabolites. And as you know, already, synthetic and herbicides are not allowed. Only few, unfortunately, only few are allowed in organic farming. And they want the active ingredient, it's listed in the input list that will show

you later. This is only an example, or is an example "Madex" one of the most used, and is to which is the active substance of your product, but is always in combination with an additive. So you have always both. And the additive are just there to keep your active substance stable in the time. So you will end up with a lot of, or more products, which contain the same active substances.

Yes. And this is, you can see in the picture left, there is the example of the copper. And in the table you see some different molecules or active ingredients used. And you can see that, for example, copper is used in the 23 different fungicides, at least in in the list. Yes, in the list. But then you have also some oil, some sulphur or bicarbonate. And yes, they all work against. So most of them work against fungi.

Then now moving to the last part, I hope I am in time. It's on the national input list.

So we will just keep now on the, skip on the top part of the pyramid.

So the active measurement, and we move, we would like to understand which are the products that are allowed or that we can use. So we have this European input list, which is a compilation of national lists. It's a political forum actually, is not, there are no legal validity for the farmers because it's a compilation of all the products that you have, but you have always to follow the national list to see which product is allowed or not in your country. In the picture that you see on the top, it's actually the different, so all the products that we have in Europe that are listed for the moment and on the right side and by the way, the QR code there just bring you directly to the input list. So the, to the web page. And on the right side you see, or you have the composition of the European input list. And as you can see, half of it, it's fertiliser. A quarter, a little more, they're feeding. And the last quarter is composed from products for cleaning, product for parasite control, or plant or strain. And only 9% of the product we have in the the European input list for the plant protection, as is, the plant protection products. What is important to say, that these lists are built for the farmer and for the advisers who pay the list are the producers. So the different actor that would like to sell a product in organic farming, they pay for the listings and the lists are based on open criteria. So are public. And the idea of the list is to create a clarity on the, or to something that is clear for everyone of which product can be used or not.

And now we go from the National input lists. The National input lists are actually the real list. So the one that -- the one that you can use in your country, and here in Switzerland we are taking over four different lands from Switzerland and Netherlands, Italy and Sweden. Germany, it is taken over by FiBL Germany and Easy-Cert takes over or looks for Austria, Croatia and Hungary. These are again a public register that are used. Or it's for the organic farmers. And it's used by the farmer to see if the products are compliant with organic regulation. And exactly the idea is to give more transparency for everyone, but also for the farmer, that they have already in farming.

And regarding the plant protection products, just some major role is more complicated than this. But the point is that we are using EU regulation to evaluate the protection products, and they must be allowed in organic farming, and the inputs should be GMO-free. These are the main major point to look for the plant protection.

And now to bring to the take home message. Yes. Just briefly you have to consider specificity above efficacy. So you have always to think about on your pest, which on which pest you are focussed on, and understand the pathogen or the pest is crucial, to find or to understand how it spread and to, to fight against them. There is a broader range of strategies applied in crop protection. We're talking about the plant protection pyramid before. Most of the strategy are preventive, an indirect strategy is actually what I will always suggest to the people. Focus on the bottom part of your pyramid, and only go on the top if it's really necessary. And it's only limited for range of plant protection products. It's yes, only slow that are low risk are allowed in organic. And for the input list, as I said before, it's a public register free of charge for the farmers. And it is to verify compliance and increased transparency for the farmer and for everyone.