They call themselves the ’Nordic Resistance Action Group’. The name makes you think of Viking expeditions, underground movements and mass demonstrations. Although the Nordic resistance group has nothing to do with politics, strikes or revolution, there is still an air of fighting spirit about it.

The enemies in question are weeds, fungi and insects. To be precise, scientists from Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway have established a Nordic resistance group to handle the increasing problems with resistance to pesticides.

- We have found an increasing number of organisms among weeds, fungi and insects that are resistant to pesticides. This is worrying since, at the same time, not so many new products are appearing on the market, says senior scientist Lise Nistrup Jørgensen from the Department of Integrated Pest Management at the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, University of Aarhus. She is one of the scientists that took the initiative to establish the group.

With the establishment of the group, the scientists in the Nordic countries will work on preventing the development of resistance to herbicides, fungicides and insecticides on several fronts. One of the ways will be to gather and organise current information and make it available to interested parties in the Nordic countries. This would typically be farmers, consultants and producers of pesticides.

The action group against pesticide resistance will prepare a list of resistant weeds, fungi and insects. The scientists will analyse how resistance to pesticides develops and monitor and communicate current developments.

Nordic network on the Internet

The relevant information will be put on a website this autumn.

However, it is not sufficient to know that an insect or a weed in a certain field is resistant to a certain pesticide. The farmer needs to know what he can do to solve the problem. The Nordic Resistance Action Group will also try to give advice in this area.

The website will contain information about treatment strategies for avoiding resistance and data about new products such as number of treatments per season, dosage, time of treatment, which pests a certain product may be used against, and if the product may be used in combination with other products.

- The information will be based on scientific studies. For example, it has never been proven that a high dosage works better than a low dosage for avoiding resistance, says Lise Nistrup Jørgensen.

Some of the information is valid regardless of local conditions. In other cases, the information will be adapted to local conditions and pay regard to local climate conditions.

The group will work on making the advice uniform in order to minimise further resistance.

After their preliminary meeting at the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, the Nordic scientists will invite scientists from the Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) to participate in the network. At the next meeting in the group, which will be held in Finland in the fall, representatives from the Baltic countries will also participate.

For more information please contact: Senior scientist Lise Nistrup Jørgensen, Department of Integrated Pest Management , Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, University of Aarhus , telephone: +45 8999 3652, e-mail: LiseN.Jorgensen@agrsci.dk

Text: Janne Hansen