Watch RELACS’ new project video on copper replacement in Hungarian organic vineyard

RELACS just released a new project video on replacing copper in plant protection products in organic viticulture.

In the organic vineyard inherited from his grandfather, vintner and owner Márton Ruppert has been cultivating Blue Frankish grapes since 2016. Over the past two years, Márton has been using tagatose to replace copper in the framework of a RELACS project’s experiment.

To better evaluate the effectiveness of tagatose, Márton Ruppert also carried out copper-based treatments in control plantations. According to him, tagatose is effective, useful and can be easily mixed and used in tank mixtures when applied as a powder. Hence, no disadvantage in comparison to common plant protection products with copper content could be found.

In addition to using tagatose, Márton Ruppert implements several other organic practices, such as large row spacing, planting cover crops, and removing unnecessary leaves. This further reduces the number of plant protection treatments on his vineyard significantly.

Watch the video (EN subtitles available) and learn more about the results of the experiment. RELACS’ project partner the Hungarian Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (ÖMKi) produced this video.

Visit the RELACS website and follow the latest project’s developments on Twitter and Facebook using @RELACSeu and #RELACSeu.

RELACS seeks to promote the development and adoption of environmentally safe and economically viable tools and technologies to reduce the use of external inputs in organic farming systems. IFOAM Organics Europe is responsible for the communication and dissemination of project results as well as the coordination of the science-practice-policy dialogue.