Brief Synopsis of the
International Plant Protection Congresses
(IPPC)
The first IPPC was held in Louvain, Belgium in 1946 and subsequent congresses have been scheduled at 4-year intervals. Congresses through 1975 focused principally on new means of controlling insects with some discussion relating to the chemical control of diseases. The majority of the participants were entomologists. The Congress held in Washington, DC in 1979 was the first organized by a multidisciplinary group consisting of plant pathologists, entomologists, weed scientists, nematologist and chemists, and the integration of these disciplines was reflected in the program. Since that time the IPPC programs have been broadly multidisciplinary with emphasis on integrated pest(1) management (IPM). For 50+ years theIPPCs have provided a forum for plant protection scientists to communicate and discuss important problems and new discoveries related to crop losses due to pests and their management.
Participation in the IPPCs
Registered participants at the IPPC's have ranged from about 400 in the early congresses to a high of 2,160 at the IXth Congress in Washington, DC in 1979 which was co-sponsored with the American Phytopathological Society. Participation from outside the hosting country has declined in recent congresses.
Lower attendance at recent IPPC's has been attributed to the following factors: (1) competing congresses in crop protection and related disciplines; (2) declining investments in food production research (including crop protection), food security, and environmental safety in the post Cold War era; (3) declining participation and financial support from the chemical industry; and (4) the fact that increasing numbers of plant protection scientists pursue research at the cellular and molecular levels and are likely to attend the more sub-discipline-specific conferences/congresses than the IPPC which focuses on multi-disciplinary, integrative research at the ecosystem level.
1 The term 'pest' is used in integrated pest management (IPM) to refer to all biotic agents that cause diseases of, insects and mites that feed upon, and weeds that compete with cultivated plants.
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