849 - Parasitic Plant Management in Sustainable Agriculture

Parasitic plants are becoming severe constraints to Mediterranean and Tropical agriculture on major crops and the efficacy of available means to control them is minimal.
The main objective of this Action was to increase the understanding of the interaction between parasitic plants and their hosts in order to implement sustainable means of control.

COST 849 allowed, for the first time, the coordination of research on parasitic weeds within Europe and associated countries. This brought about new collaborations in some key issues: accelerating the genomic study of host-parasite interaction; developing new means to increase efficacy of biocontrol agents against broomrape species, developing the first steps toward standardisation of race identification for Orobanche cumana, and development of a draft sanitation protocol for the prevention of further spread of broomrape seeds in agricultural areas. This is mainly expressed, in the short term, by joint scientific publications, but in the long term it allowed the acquaintances needed for joint research proposals. Several joint research proposals have already been submitted by COST 849 members (like LEGMORO in 2002), some have been granted financial support, e.g. GLIP which is currently EU-FP6 funded and examines host-parasite interrelations for the development of new resistances against broomrape in legumes.