About the project

About Integrated Weed Management

PRActical Implementation and Solutions for Europe (IWMPRAISE)

Integrated weed management is the future

Integrated weed management (IWM) is the way to go for sustainable and resilient agriculture. IWMPRAISE is a Horizon 2020 project that will support and promote the implementation of IWM in Europe. The five-year project began in June 2017 and will run until November 2022. It is coordinated by professor Per Kudsk, Department of Agroecology, Aarhus University, Denmark.

The project has been granted 6.6m Euro and aims to support and promote integrated weed management (IWM) in Europe. Weed management in Europe will become more environmental friendly if the concept of integrated weed management takes better hold on European farms.

– The project aims to demonstrate that IWM supports more sustainable cropping systems that are resilient to external impacts and do not jeopardise profitability or the steady supply of food, feed and biomaterials, says professor Per Kudsk.

The project consortium consists of 37 partners from eight different European countries and includes 11 leading universities and research institutes within the area of weed management, 14 SMEs and industrial partners, and 12 advisory services and end user organisations.

Workpackages

Partners

110

Participants

Focus on four scenarios

The project will develop, test and assess management strategies delivered across whole cropping systems for four contrasting management scenarios representing typical crops in Europe.

– By adopting this categorical approach we can establish principles and develop IWM strategies that can be applied beyond the case studies that the project will focus on, says Per Kudsk.

The four scenarios that the project will focus on are:

Annually drilled crops in narrow rows (e.g. small grain cereals, oilseed rape)
Annually drilled crops in wide rows (e.g. maize, sunflowers, field vegetables)
Perennial herbaceous crops (e.g. grasslands, alfalfa, red clover)
Perennial woody crops (e.g. pome fruits, citrus fruits, olives)

Overcoming barriers and spreading the word

The project will review current socio-economic and agronomic barriers to the uptake of IWM in Europe and develop and optimize novel alternative weed control methods. On this basis, the project will create a toolbox of validated IWM tools. The project will also design, demonstrate and assess the performance and environmental and economic sustainability of context-specific IWM strategies for the various management scenarios that address the needs and concerns of end users and the public at large.

A final output of the project will be to make the results available to end users via online information, farmer field days, educational programmes, dissemination tools and knowledge exchange with rural development operational groups dealing with IWM issues.

National clusters at the core

National clusters will be established in each of the participating countries. The concept of national clusters is a novel feature of the project. The national clusters are networks consisting of farmer organisations, advisory services, SMEs and research institutes. They will be responsible for designing, on-farm testing, and conducting the preliminary validation of the IWM strategies studied in their country.

– The national cluster concept originates from experience and observations from previous European and national crop protection programmes that true innovation only happens if all actors, i.e. end users, research, extension, and technology providers, work closely together and if innovative solutions are customised to local conditions, says Per Kudsk.

Facts about IWMPRAISE:

The project has been granted 6.6m Euro from EU’s Horizon 2020 scheme.
The total budget is approximately 7.1m Euro.
The project will run for five years and began in June 2017.
The project consortium consists of 37 partners from eight different European countries.
The partners include 11 leading universities and research institutes within the area of weed management, 14 SMEs and industrial partners, and 12 advisory services and end user organisations.