Dear colleagues and friends,
It is our pleasure to announce today that the 18th International Plant Protection Congress 2015 will take place in Berlin, Germany.
The congress will be held from August 24 to 27, 2015, 25 years after the reunification of Germany. The conference will be held under the patronage of the International Association for the Plant Protection Sciences (IAPPS), the German Phytomedical Society (DPG), Julius Kühn Institute (JKI) and the Agriculture Industry Association (IVA). It will take place in the Henry Ford Building of the Free University of Berlin.
Berlin itself is one of the most exciting cities in Europe. As the capital of reunified Germany it is rapidly developing, bringing together both western and eastern aspects. Cultural life is also very vivid and rich, taking in outstanding historical and art museums to opera, theater and minor arts. Although Berlin is a big city, it has an abundance of greens and parks and many lakes and waterways. Last but not least Berlin provides more than 100,000 hotel rooms for its guests.
DPG – the German Society of Plant Protection and Plant Health - is the largest association in agriculture production in Germany. Their members come from the industry, universities, governmental research, but also from extension services. DPG supports teaching research, but also consulting, so that all the expertise comes together. Their mission is to bring together expertise from all over the world in these special, different areas of phytopathology so that they can discuss among scientists on different phytopathological topics.
The Julius Kühn Institute closely cooperates with universities and other basic research organizations. Without the Julius Kühn Institute a very important link would be missing between basic research results and the implementation of the basic research under practical conditions in the fields and the cooperation with the extension service people. Their research focuses on special agricultural crops like barley, weed, maize and legume crops and they do genetic research on crops, focusing on the resistance of these crops to non-biotic stress factors, but also to diseases and pests.
The IVA cooperates with a lot of institutions, universities, innovation circles, and think tanks…. This they cannot do alone. They need international approaches to international questions. The main tasks of the federal state plant protection service are advisory service, testing of pesticides and equipment, testing of plants and surveying and monitoring of plant stocks and of course implementation of rules and enforcement of policies.
We all would really like to welcome you in Berlin. It’s a great opportunity to get together, talk about problems we have on a worldwide scale and please come there, contribute and help to solve problems on feeding the world and growing more from less.
Yours sincerely,
Dr. Bernd Holtschulte, Vice President German Phytomedical Society (DPG)
Prof. Dr. Georg Friedrich Backhaus, President Julius Kühn Institute (JKI)
Dr. Hans-Theo Jachmann, President Agriculture Industry Association (IVA)
