Water, Not Pesticides

Plant protection is essential to secure food supply and guarantee its high quality. Products contributing to plant protection, however, must be effective and pose only minimal risk and hazards for humans, animals, and the environment. For this reason, the Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection supports a research consortium investigating the effectiveness of an innovative, water-based plant protection product.    

Led by the Department of Plant Physiology at RWTH Aachen, a multidisciplinary consortium will investigate the capacity of “aqua.protect,” an environmentally-friendly plant protection product that is safe for humans and animals. The water-based product is already being used in water and food sanitation against microbial contaminations. The consortium will generate knowledge and develop processes by which aqua.protect could be applied to plants in conventional and organic farming.

The consortium consists of the two private companies ARGUS monitoring and Aquagroup AG as well as four public institutions, including the natural sciences departments at RWTH Aachen, the agricultural sciences represented by the Institute of Plant Diseases from the University of Bonn, the Julius-Kühn-Institute for Biological Control, Darmstadt, and the “Dienstleistungszentrum für den ländlichen Raum Rheinpfalz,” Neustadt (Services Center for the Rural Areas in the Rheinpfalz).

The 38-month project, which receives 1.3 million euros in funding from the Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection, is coordinated by the Federal Office for Agriculture and Food.