IPMorama: major European advances in plant variety resistance and integrated crop protection

For GEVES, this was an opportunity to communicate with INRAE in Moulon regarding progress in data collection to enable the spatio-temporal monitoring of the spread of varietal resistance at European level for the three types of rust (yellow, brown and black) affecting soft and durum wheat, and potato late blight.

In partnership with Aarhus University in Denmark and INRAE BIOGER, GEVES also reported on the results of the 2026 epidemiological monitoring of rust diseases in Europe.

GEVES continues to coordinate, at European level, a set of sentinel varieties (including differential hosts and susceptible control varieties) established at 85 VSCU and seed production sites across 20 European countries. Severity ratings showed a high incidence of brown rust at 70% of sites, a moderate incidence of yellow rust (>50%) and a low incidence of black rust (<9%). This monitoring of sentinel varieties within the European VSCU network helped to provide an early warning of the spread of Yr15 virulence of the new Champion race of yellow rust, detected on the Mariboss sentinel variety, in eight countries: Belgium, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Poland, Denmark, Norway and Hungary. The brown rust sentinel varieties demonstrated that the Lr28 resistance had been bypassed at 47% of the sites, and at half that rate for Lr24 (23.4%), whilst bypass of both Lr24 and Lr28 was observed at 32% of sites across eight countries.

For the new 2026–27 campaign, GEVES will monitor the deployment of 82 sets of sentinel plots from 30 institutes across 18 countries.

Finally, under the auspices of INRAE BIOGER, GEVES contributed to the initial findings of a field trial involving mixed varieties of winter wheat, designed to delay the emergence of new strains of yellow or brown rust whilst preserving the longevity of the resistance sources used.