Plant Protection – Quo vadis?

The Plant Protection Act and the National Plan for the Sustainable Use of Plant Protection Products are the basis for plant protection in Germany. Key elements for the use of plant protection products are both the integrated pest management and the necessary dose.

The current situation in plant protection is characterized by a strong and quick development of resistance against plant protection products and by an expanding occurrence of new respectively different pathogens. This leads to a growing necessity for effective plant protection measures, which cannot be covered by the use of plant protection products only. Therefore a return to agronomic principles in the sense of a preventive plant protection will gain a higher attention. However the use of plant protection products will not loose its importance.

Plant protection as a whole will become a highly sophisticated discipline with elements such as diagnosis, objective trials, precision application techniques, exact prognosis and an expert knowledge. All parties involved (politics, registration offices, practice, advisory services, science and research) are requested to take part in a discussion, which is purposive and oriented to benefit/risk aspects on the one hand and open for the development and implementation of new plant protection strategies on the other hand.