Can they be contained once and for all? This was a question reported by all the presenters asked by farmers from different parts of the globe . DPG Session: Crop biotic stresses. Pests and diseases and their control or their containment in the agricultural systems has been on discussion since time immemorial, with farmers trying all means that are economically viable with regard to their crop in question. Recent concerns also has been on the human health and the environment, bringing the farmers to a dilemma when it comes to creating an equilibrium with regards to high yields versus human health and the environment. Researchers have not been left out in this journey.They have come up with various biological as well as cultural control ideas, breeding of resistant varieties, improvement of farming techniques together with agronomy among others, with the main focus of reducing the use of synthetic chemicals to the minimal. Poster presentation session; Measuring Resistance in Potato to Phytophthora infestans with Field, Laboratory and Greenhouse Assays

"Quality of food crops and better diet can only be a chieved by adequet mineral suppy to the crop during production " View from; The invited speaker, Ismail Cakmak,Sabanci University, Istanbul-Turkey;Together with the other oral presenters. Only 25% is reported for the global yield potential due to Abiotic and Biotic stress factors. Thus, the main focus in this session was in the area of Mineral Nutrition in crop production as well as Pesticide Usage during the production phase. From the presentations in the area of mineral nutrition, it was clear that food crop quality consumed by humans is greatly influenced by the plant nutrition as well as irrigation. The Macro and Micro-nutrients play a major role in seed formation in plants, reproduction and growth and thus affecting both human and animal health. Macronutrients deficiency in humans has been associated with high consumption of cereal based foods which are low in these nutrients. The only available solutions, and also limited to urban dwellers, are suppplementation and food fortification. Further agricultural based solution being breeding and Agronomy (fertilization), with agronomy offering the better solution as alot of work has been done and also is economically viable to the farmers.

Student reporter is the social interactive arm of the Tropentag conference which takes place annually in Germany. It was started in the year 2010 as a connection medium between the conference and the participants globally, broadcasting conference information/ details to the public through social media; Blog (http://blog.tropentag.de), Youtube( tropentag), Facebook(Tropentag Student Network),Flickr( tropentag) and Twitter(tropentag@tropentag). The management and the organization of the Tropentag Student reporter is controlled by the ATSAF secretariat in Hohenheim; which organizes and coordinates the call of application and selection of student reporters together with other modalities involved in the preparation for the workshop.

Selected Student Reporters always come from diverse backgrounds, which are not necessarily leaned towards Journalism but some experience in social media, report writing as well as journalism is of added advantage.

Therefore the selected candidates take part in technical introductory training workshop in journalism/ social media 2 days prior to the Tropentag conference. However, the participants are only selected from the European affiliated Universities due to the technicalities involved in the transport.The period between the call for papers and the final organizational meeting is about four months.