Research

SafeCrop encompasses three activity sectors: pathogen control, insect control and risk assessment.
Current activities deal with grapevine, apple, strawberry, small fruits and other horticultural crops as required.

Pathogen Control Research Unit (PC RU)

The long-term objective of the activities of this unit is to reduce chemical fungicide input on crops. It intends to implement pathogen control methods based on the use of micro-organisms, their metabolites or analogous and/or their integration with other non chemical methods such as cultural ones.

Insect Control Research Unit (IC RU)

The long aim of the activities of this unit is to develop new effective and environmental friendly control techniques based on Insect Behavioural Regulators (IBRs) that could replace the traditional insecticides. IBRs could also be useful to reduce the agricultural chemical input by improving the monitoring techniques necessary to time the treatments.

Risk assessment, molecular tools and side effects of non chemical methods for control plant pathogens and parasite Research Unit (RAMT RU)

The objectives of the activities of this unit are to describe the fate of the BCAs in the agricultural ecosystems, to ascertain the lack of environmental and health risk in the use of BCAs and other natural metabolites and to furnish molecular tools for the other RU, in particular to integrate the knowledge of molecular biology, with classical biology. The purpose is to develop brand new molecular markers both for insects and for plant pathogens, in particular to obtain co-dominant highly informative PCR-based markers.
Of highest interest will be the establishment of a high throughput automated routine analysis of organisms in order to reduce human handling to a minimum, process hundreds of samples per time and to allow simultaneous diagnosis, quantification and/or tracking of several organisms.
Large scale application of soft control strategies using BCAs may raise questions such as unwanted environmental and food contamination.
This unit will furnish the know-how to evaluate long term ecological and economical impacts of BCAs.