CIHEAM Zaragoza, together with ICARDA, the Agrifood Research and Technology Centre of Aragon (CITA), the European Weed Research Society (EWRS) and the Spanish Weed Science Society (SEMh), organized the course “Advances in Weed Management for Sustainable Agriculture” from 28 March to 2 April 2022.
The topic of the course attracted a great deal of interest, as reflected in the high number of applications (95), from 19 countries in Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia. The 24 successful applicants were professionals from 7 countries (Algeria, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Tunisia and Turkey), working at universities, research centres and private firms.
The course took place in hybrid format delivered by 15 experts from universities and research centres in Denmark (2), Italy (1), the Netherlands (11) and Spain (1), on topics related to integrated weed management.
The course commenced with an institutional welcome from CIHEAM Zaragoza and the other organizers: CITA, SEMh and EWRS, followed by interventions from Alicia Cirujeda and Joaquín Aibar who presented the programme, introduced the lecturers and explained the practicals, group work and technical visits.
The programme was organized in three blocks. The first was delivered by Paolo Barberi from the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna addressing how to frame weed management into sustainable agriculture and face current challenges for weed management and control. This was followed by moderated debate with the participation of Lammert Bastiaans from the University of Wageningen (Holland) and Alicia Cirujeda from the CITA (Spain).
The second block, given by Lammert Bastiaans, and Jordi Recasens and Bàrbara Baraibar from the University of Lleida, focused on the applications of weed biology and ecology that are needed to implement sustainable weed management systems, and study weed population and community dynamics, weed seed banks, and crop-weed interaction. This section also covered invasive and emerging weeds, trends and effects in Mediterranean environments.
The third block dealt with how to build a weed management system made up of 4 important steps: know your enemy, preventive measures, crop weed management and direct management measures in annual and perennial crops. In this final part of the course Lammert Bastiaans, Alicia Cirujeda and Joaquín Aibar were accompanied by José Dorado from the CSIC in Madrid, Paul Neve and Bo Melander from the University of Copenhague, Josep María Montul from the University of Lleida, and Nuria Pedrol from the University of Vigo.
José María Peña from the CSIC in Madrid and Ana Isabel de Castro from the INIA also in Madrid, led the hands-on part of the course and explained weed scouting, using images from different remote sensing programmes. Besides, Artiz Royo-Esnal from the University of Lleida presented decision support systems. Two technical visits were organized: one to the CITA’s botanical garden and a weekend visit to private farm estates to see integrated weed management programmes on site.
The course concluded with team projects where participants were asked to build an integrated weed management system. Participants worked in 5 groups followed by a general presentation of their results. A round table was organized to discuss the topics addressed throughout the week.