The disease results in 50% less productive plants, a decrease in the quality of the wine and the premature death of healthy vines. Our aim is to produce a really effective, totally natural preventive solution to this very serious and very expensive problem. In France alone, around 12% of vineyards were unproductive between 20 due to Grape Trunk Disease (GTD) which has been spreading across Europe over the past two decades. A chemical pesticide used to treat vines was banned because it is harmful to human and environmental health. Biological solutions benefit soil health and biodiversity too.

‘There is a lot of evidence that replacing chemicals with biopesticides works with nature rather than against it,’ said Dr. Sustainability goals mean biopesticides or biological alternatives to pesticides are required. The EU’s Farm to Fork (F2F) strategy for sustainable food production targets significant reductions in the use of chemical pesticides, fertilisers and antimicrobials and supports an increase in organic farming. Some synthetic pesticides have been linked to human diseases like cancer, diseases of the immune system and respiratory illnesses.įarmers who work with pesticides are particularly vulnerable to side-effects, with an estimated 44% of farm workers worldwide experiencing at least one incident of acute pesticide poisoning every year.

Pesticide pollution causes risk to farmland from the chemical residues that leach into water supplies. The chemical runoff also damages the land and water. Spraying crops with synthetic compounds has adverse impacts on people, farm animals, wildlife, pollinators like bees and other living things that play an essential role in the ecosystem. ‘But now we know that a chemical designed to kill a living organism is likely to have negative impacts on other biological systems too.’ ‘There was a time when it was normal to rely on powerful pesticides to treat agricultural land,’ she said. Abriouel goes on to explain, our growing reluctance to use chemicals in agriculture adds a layer of complication to farming. The question of food security is uppermost these days. The economic loss from invasive species is immense.ĭr. With the stakes so high, it’s easy to understand why the agricultural sector is one of the largest users of chemicals worldwide. Hikmate Abriouel, professor of microbiology at Universidad de Jaén in Spain’s Andalucía. ‘The economic loss from invasive species is immense, and if we took no action, there would be a huge amount of food insecurity, not only across the EU but across the globe,’ said Dr. The United Nations (UN) estimates that plant disease costs the world’s economy over €200 billion per year, with 20-40% of crop production lost to pests. The threat to agriculture from invasive species is huge.

Organic insecticides and pesticides