Paper published: “‘Cu-Chi-Tri’, a new generation combination for knowledge-based management of oomycete pathogen, Phytophthora”

Today, we learned that the book “Emerging Trends in Plant Pathology ” has finally appeared. In this book, we have published for the first time part of our joint results with the group of our colleague Prof. Jatinder Kumar from the G. B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology in Pantnagar, India. We collaborated in the first ever Indo-German “2+2” project CuChi-BCA in which the two academic partners collaborated with two industrial partners, Spiess-Urania on the German side and SriBiotech on the Indian side. The aim was to develop a triple combination of copper fungicides with chitosan biostimulants and bio-control strains of Trichoderma, in order to achieve a significant reduction of copper usage in plant protection. The combination is not trivial. Chitosan and copper tend to precipitate, so we had to find nano- and microformulations for the combination. And we had to select Trichoderma strains which are copper- and chitosan-tolerant. In the end, we identified the best suited chitosan and its optimal formulation with the most potent copper fungicide and succeeded in combining it with a few highly efficient Trichoderma strains. In Germany, we managed a 30% reduction in copper dosage on grapes, and in India even a 50% reduction on potatoes. A huge step towards achieving the goal of a 50% reduction in pesticide use in Europe! Currently, we are continuing this development in the smartBioS project. The idea for the CuChi-BCA project was born on a tour through different plantations – rubber, cocoa, tea, coffee, vanilla, pepper… – in Kerala when Bruno Moerschbacher visited Dr. Sarma, the former Director of the Indian Institute of Spices Research who pointed out the many problems caused by oomycete pathogens there. Sadly, Dr. Sarma – the “pepper man” as we called him – passed away shortly after our successful project. We would have loved to continue collaborating with him. He was not only an excellent scientist but also a generous and exceedingly friendly person. We owe him a lot.