Bern, 21.08.2018 - Over 300 researchers from around the world will come together in Geneva from 28 to 31 August 2018 for the 15th Congress of the European Society for Agronomy. On the agenda are a comprehensive lecture series and field visits on the topic of "Innovative production systems and agricultural crops for high-quality food production".
The agriculture and food sectors face major challenges: feeding the growing world population with high-quality food in sufficient quantity despite dwindling resources such as farmland. To address these challenges, it is now recognized that agricultural production systems must improve to use resources more efficiently. Furthermore, the use of plant-protection products must drop and the negative impacts on ecosystems and natural resources must decrease in a sustainable manner.
This international congress brings together the results of numerous complementary research projects, facilitating more efficient progress and enabling the formulation of consolidated recommendations for agriculture. The aim of agronomic research, of course, is to incorporate research findings directly into agricultural practices. For Switzerland, with its very diverse pedo-climatic conditions, collaboration with international universities and institutions is essential to tackle problems more broadly and develop customised solutions.
The congress program deals with agronomic crop production issues on three levels: plants, cropping methods, and production systems at farm and regional level. Among the numerous topics discussed, the following will be addressed in particular: cropping methods with efficient use of resources (irrigation, plant nutrition, soil preparation, intercropping), climate-change-related stresses, reducing the use of plant-protection products, and variety selection (development of resistance to diseases).
This high-profile event is organised by four institutions strongly involved in Swiss agronomic research: Agroscope, the ETH Zurich, the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture, and the Swiss Society of Agronomy.