description
- Chemical pesticides have significantly contributed to increase productivity and quality of produce worldwide. The risk of losing production because of pests/diseases damages is strongly perceived by growers, who consequently tend to minimize it by using chemical pesticides. On the other hand, consumers are more and more concerned about pesticides. There is a strong need for innovative products from natural origin, safe for humans and the environment, renewable and with a fast biodegradation on the crops in order to minimize residues on food. These products are especially important in those crops where the harvest time is long and plant protection is needed during it. One of the main bottlenecks in developing these products is represented by the poor overlapping and integration between public research institutes and private companies, the first mainly focusing at the production of fundamental scientific knowledge, the latter specialized in the production, formulation and selling of products. The main aim of this Transfer of Knowledge proposal is to reach a better integration between public research and private sector by a close collaboration trough secondments. The main specific objectives are the identification of innovative biopesticides to help growers to produce pesticide residues-free food focusing on the most critical crops and growing stages and to select the potential biopesticides according their intrinsic technological qualities; the development of suitable formulations of the innovative biopesticides; the deepening of the research on some specific aspects requested for the registration and the identification of the best application strategies in IPM and the suitable market strategies. Registered commercial biopesticides are foreseen as final result.