Our partenrs from JKI and UNIPD, Ali Karimi and Riccardo Favaro attended the 39th Annual Meeting of the International Society of Chemical Ecology, which took place from 14-18 July 2024, at the Czech University of Life Science in Prague, Czech Republic.

The PurPest concept was presented at the 1^st workshop of the 2^nd working group in the Cost Action 'European Network In CHemical Ecology: translating the language of life into sustainability' (E-NICHE, CA 22102) in Prague. Andrea Ficke showed some of the first results and challenges of PurPest after discussing a similiar approach used in detecting leaf blotch diseases in wheat.

On July 11^th and 12^th of 2024, the third general PurPest meeting took place in Brno, in a hybrid format, and was an opportunity for all members to come together and discuss the progress that was made in the different work packages, and share the outputs that were produced.

Participants also had the chance to visit the wonderful Mendel’s University and see the Phytophthora...

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...