"Effective and sustainable BIO-fungicides to REduce the use of SYnthetic PEsticides in wheat supply chain - BIO-RESYPE"

Due to the even more arising necessity to reduce the use of chemical pesticides in agriculture, in order to achieve both the environmental impact and the consumers demand for safer agro-food products, this project will try to develop more conscientious methods for wheat protection following the Green Deal strategy and the Farm to Fork Strategy of the EuropeanUnion and fully in accordance with the “do no significant harm” (DNSH) principle. In particular, the use of alternatives to synthetic chemical fungicides will be investigated in order to obtain a wheat production more sustainable and healthy for the environment and theconsumers. This research BIO-RESYPE will be performed by 3 RUs managed by the PI (WP1) and always involved in the strategic and scientific orientation of the project that will bedeveloped following 6 WPs. Bioactive natural products, either as pure compounds or as standardized extracts, will be obtained from different agri-food wastes following eco-friendly and circular economy approaches(WP2). Their main constituents, as polyphenols, terpenes and derivatives are known to exert antimicrobial activities, both as components of plant tissues, but also when appliedexternally. Together with bio-active extracts even biological control agents (BCA), plant bio-stimulants and natural elicitors will be taken into consideration as possible alternatives tosubstitute or to integrate chemical control of fungal disease in wheat. Possible “Green Alternatives to Pesticides” will be tested firstly in vitro to verify their ability to limit fungal development. Main fungal pathogens of wheat will be considered such asPuccinia triticina, Septoria spp. and Fusarium spp. Moreover, particular attention will be paid to their possible role in reducing consumers’ health concerns by limiting toxigenic fungidevelopment and mycotoxin production. This will be an important point to be explored because of the high incidence of mycotoxigenic fungi frequently isolated from wheat and mainlybelonging to Genus Fusarium (WP3). In vitro trials will be followed by in field trials aiming to verify even on plants the potential efficacy of selected bio-fungicides to reduce fungal inoculum and infection and consequently,fungal diseases development and mycotoxin production (WP4). Overall, 12 experimental fields will be carried out, and different strategies for treatments, according to several doses andscheduled times, or integrated mixture of solutions will be considered. After in vitro and in vivo experiments it will be possible to compare strategies able to reduce the use of fungicides in wheat with no effects on yield and on product competitivenessproposing a re-designed wheat disease management, with no risks for the end consumers’ health (WP5). The most relevant results obtained from the BIO-RESYPE project and able tohave an important innovation impact will be disseminated to all actors of wheat production chain (WP6).