Dear colleagues, 

I hope that the year 2021 has started well with various matters concerning your work. We are approaching a period of year when the annual rhythm in field work differs a lot between South European countries starting spring-sowing operations while here in the North the snow will likely cover the fields until the end of March and the normal sowing time for spring cereals is in early May and actually in early June in northern Finland.  

The operational EWRS activities started right after the Holiday Season in early January. The first management meeting dealt with the publishing landscape of our journal Weed Research. Alison Haughton and Paul Neve discussed with the EWRS Board to be prepared for the meeting of Editorial Board of WRE later this spring. One of the key issues to all of us was that we should publish much more WRE papers than the current annual average of about 50 articles to maintain the income from Wiley when slowly moving towards open access publishing model. I hope you always consider WRE as the first option when submitting your manuscripts. 

The first joint activity organized by the EWRS will be the set of five webinars starting on Thursday 25th of February. The Webinar Team, Lena Ulber, Camilla Moonen, Sabine Gennai-Schott and Maor Matzrafi as Moderators, has succeeded to compile an interesting program with qualified Speakers in their own subject area of weed research. I would like to thank already now all Speakers for sharing your expertise and views for the audience. I encourage all members to join the webinars and be active in the discussion.   

Another offer for the membership will be the EWRS Elections 2021. It is again the moment to start thinking and nominating candidates for a position of Vice President for the period of 2022-2023. I can assure you that interesting duties are waiting for the one who will be elected. Luckily, Husrev Mennan will continue as Scientific Secretary giving all his experience and support in the scientific actions to come. In addition to VP, we will elect two additional members to the EWRS Board 2022-2025. Altogether six candidates will be pre-selected by the current Board. I kindly remind you that the Elections are the real moment when we all have an influence over the gender of new Board members.  

Please follow the information flow from our Communication Team to ensure that you will stay up-to-date with the coming EWRS actions. Right now it looks like that no physical EWRS events will be conceivable before the autumn 2021. Meanwhile, please start preparing yourselves for the EWRS Symposium 2022 (www.ewrs2022.org) now that the submission of Abstracts will start right after the hectic summer season.   

Take care and enjoy wonderful winter weeks! 

Jukka Salonen, EWRS President 

22 February 2021  

Photo: Reijo Kela’s Artwork “The Silent People” living in an abandoned field in eastern Finland