Dear colleagues, 

 

Cancelled, postponed, to be announced later, organized as on-line, working at home. Sounds 2020! Indeed, the Covid-19 pandemic has affected our standard procedures at work. After some less worrisome Summer months the spread of virus is accelerating again with differences in regional and country-wise intensity. I find some similarities between the Covid-19 pandemic and weeds in organic cropping systems. Both preventive and curative methods are available for management; just the effective chemical option, herbicide vs. vaccine, is missing. So, challenging but not impossible to handle.  

 

The EWRS Officers have closely followed the development of the epidemic and adjusted the EWRS activities accordingly. In practice this means that the EWRS ExCom meeting in Ede/Wageningen in early March was the one and only LIVE event for this year. The administrative meetings (SciCom, Board) have just been arranged on-line and I would like to pick up some urgent News for your information.  

 

Firstly, the 19th EWRS Symposium in Athens has now been postponed with one year. The main arguments are that we want to get people safely on the spot and traditionally EWRS has tried to avoid an overlap with other weed conferences, now the IWSC 2021 in Bangkok. I would like to thank Demosthenis Chacalis and his local organizing team for flexibility. The original date 21-24 June 2021 is now replaced with 20-23 June 2022. Please update your calendar. The place will be the same and the Symposium web site (www.ewrs2022.org) will keep you updated. Think positive, one additional year for collecting data to your contribution.  

 

Secondly, the EWRS Working Groups have started to adjust their efforts. Instead of physical Workshops during 2021 the Coordinators will brainstorm alternative on-line activities like training courses and webinars. In case the Covid-19 situation allows, Working Groups are welcome and financed to organize standard Workshops as well. The common EWRS policy to support young scientists will remain. Acknowledgements to our overseas colleague Steve Duke who offered links to free webinars on herbicide resistance earlier this year. True international cooperation!    

 

I assume that your work with weeds and weed management has continued in the fields, labs and on screen during 2020. Please let us know about the achievements and results by writing short News or Blogs to our web site and by publishing your articles in the journal Weed Research.  

 

I hope that the illumination from your laptop screen is not the only source of light in your life during the dark months of the year.  

 

Kind regards, 

 

Jukka Salonen, EWRS President 

 

03-November-2020