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Publications

NIBIOs employees contribute to several hundred scientific articles and research reports every year. You can browse or search in our collection which contains references and links to these publications as well as other research and dissemination activities. The collection is continously updated with new and historical material.

2013

Abstract

Common juniper (Juniperus communis) hosts not many pests or pathogens, but recently increasing needle blight has been observed in Norway. During a survey the needle blight was recorded in many parts of southern Norway but not above 550 m a.s.l., and it has been found both in forests, pastures and gardens. Trees are affected differently; some trees seem to be unaffected, while other trees may be killed. The cause of the disease is a fungus in the family Mycosphaerellaceae hitherto not reported from Norway. In forest pathology literature it has been named Stigmina juniperina, but also Asperisporium juniperinum. However, based on results of molecular sequence analyses it is proposed here that a more appropriate name should be Passalora juniperina (Georgescu & Badea) H. Solheim comb. Nov.

Abstract

Effective pest management is a prerequisite to maintain yields of sufficient quality and quantitywithin agriculture. In conventional agriculture this involves the use of pesticides, and current legislation focus on the need for increased awareness of the environmental consequences and a sustainable use. The Norwegian Agricultural Environmental Monitoring Program (JOVA) aims at documenting environmental consequences of both the current agricultural practices and changes with time,due to changes imposed by policy, laws and regulations, climatic factors a.o., and include collection of pesticide use data within selected agricultural catchments. The catchment scale data on plant protection practices from the JOVA-program indicate reduced use of pesticides in the catchments dominated by potatoes and vegetables, and meadows and pasture, while there are no indications of reduced use of pesticides in cereal production. There have been marked shifts in the pesticide use within the catchments during the monitoring period due to changes in management practices and the continuous change in the range of pesticides available for control of a certain pest. The monitoring of pesticide residues in surface and ground waters in the JOVA-catchments depend on analyses that do not include all important pesticides in use. Hence, the environmental challenges connected to the current pesticide use in Norwegian agriculture are not fully explored. This is particularly of concern regarding the widespread use of glyphosate and sulfonylurea herbicides for weed control, as well as the rapidly increasing use of prothioconazole to control Fusarium spp. in cereal. The long-term, farm scale pesticide use data from the JOVA-program is a unique source ofinformation to establish the necessary knowledge to design measures and instruments to reduce pesticide pollution from agriculture, and should be utilized in the future use of pesticide risk indicator models that is recommended through the Framework Directive for Sustainable Use of Pesticides.

Abstract

Chemical pesticides should disappear rapidly after achieving its intended effect, leaving the environment free from harmful residual amounts. Due to the complex interactions between the processes affecting the fate of pesticides and various environmental factors, pesticides and metabolites might persist and be transported in the environment. The Norwegian Agricultural Environmental Monitoring Program (JOVA) aims at documenting the environmental consequences of current agricultural practices and changes in these practices with time, and includes monitoring of possible occurrence ofpesticide residues in streams and rivers in selected agricultural catchments. Sixteenyears of pesticide monitoring within the JOVA-catchments shows considerablevariation in retrieval of pesticide residues in water with time, and demonstrate the need for long-term time series as a reference to enable evaluation of single-year results. On average two pesticides are detected in each sample analysed, but there are large variations between the different catchments. The overall trends emerging from the monitoring data for the period 1995-2010 include (1) reduced environmental load from pesticides in potato and vegetable production, (2) increased use and detections of fungicides in cereal, (3) low concentrations of pesticides detected in areas with meadows and pasture, and (4) detections of pesticides in large rivers. The validity ofthese results is limited by the restrictions in the pesticides analysed compared to the pesticides in use, as well as other methodological and analytical restrictions, and the problems with pesticides in surface and ground waters of Norwegian agricultural catchments are not yet fully explored. The implementation of new European regulations within the fields of water management, in general, and sustainable use of pesticides, in particular, demands continuous monitoring to document their effects. To fulfill theserequirements the pesticide monitoring in JOVA can be expected to have continuedand increased value in the years to come.