On July 5^th, 2024, a PurPest meeting of the Portuguese partners took place at HERCULES Laboratory, in Évora, where INIAV, the University of Évora and DGAV teams discussed results obtained so far on volatile profiles of the pinewood nematode.

Luís Bonifácio, from INIAV, attended the XXVI IUFRO World Congress, gave a talk and presented a poster in the Pine Wilt Disease-dedicated session, and both included PURPEST project results. The event took place in Stockholm, Sweden, between the 23^rd to the 29^th of June, 2024.

Our partners from NTNU, presented parts of their PurPest results at the 19^th International Symposium of Olfaction and Taste (ISOT), held in Reykjavik, Iceland, from 22-26 June, 2024.

Two posters were presented:

       1. Electrophysiological features across neuronal types in the primary olfactory center of the insect brain. Jonas H. Kymre, Xi Chu, and Bente...

On Thursday June 13th,  Daniel Nilsen Wright presented the PurPest EU project at IMAPS Nordic's conference NordPac 2024 in Tampere, Finland.

The audience, who were mainly experts in microelectronics,packaging and sensors, were very interested in our approach in reaching EU's goal of reducing pesticide use by 50%.

 On Wednesday, June 12th, Stelios Kartakis presented a poster at the 28th International Consortium of Applied Bioeconomic Research (ICABR) in Ravello, Italy (June 11-14th). 

The poster, “Potential impact of Spodoptera frugiperda in Europe” is a work in progress, aiming to obtain insights into the pest’s potential economic impact on maize farmers, as part of the PurPest EU...

  On May 29^th, at the Universidade de Évora, Maria João Camacho, our PurPest EU project scholarship holder, successfully defended her PhD thesis on innovative methods for detecting plant parasitic nematodes. Her work was supervised by Maria Lurdes Inácio - NemaINIAV and Eugénia Andrade at Instituto Nacional de Investigação Agrária e Veterinária, IP (INIAV, IP). Dr. Maria João Camacho...

Maria João Camacho, from INIAV, gave an oral presentation at Labsummit-2024, presented the PurPest project and invited the audience interested in these technologies to  follow the project at PurPest's communication channels.

The event took place in Coimbra/Portugal, at Convento de São Francisco (16^th – 18^th May 2024).

Our partners Ali Karimi and Jürgen Gross, from the Institute for Plant Protection in Fruit Crops and Viticulture at the Julius Kühn-Institut, have published a new article in Frontiers in Horticulture, on the "Development and validation of an innovative headspace collection technique: volatile organic compound patterns emitted by different developmental stages of Halyomorpha...

PurPest coordinator, Andrea Ficke, was interviewed on new technologies in agriculture for the journal Norsk Landbruk. The article ‘Lukt skal avsløre skadegjorerne’ (Odours will detect pests) was published in the first volume of 2024, where the use of sensors to detect pests both during import and in the field was discussed.