International Conference Plant Health for Sustainable Agriculture (PHSA), Ljubljana 2015

The International Conference Plant Health for Sustainable Agriculture (PHSA) was organized by Agricultural Institute of Slovenia within the framework of the FP7 project CROPSUSTAIN in Ljubljana on May 11th and 12th 2015. Over 170 participants from 18 European countries discussed current challenges in Plant Health, Biotechnology and Plant Breeding.

Our goals are effective and environmentally-friendly plant protection and pest management, which are the basis for sustainable agriculture. We will achieve this with preventive measures, pest monitoring, studying pest bionomy, their response to environmental factors, biological control and natural enemies, predictions of pest spread and modelling pest development, plant breeding and development of efficient Decision Support Systems. Essential for sustainability are implementation of measures for decreasing the risk due to the use of pesticides, and development and implementation of the principles of Integrated Pest Management in agriculture. As pests do not recognise geopolitical boundaries when they spread, cooperation, knowledge and data sharing, joint development of technologies between countries, institutions and individuals are necessary.