Faculty of Science

Plant Protection Products: Use, Risk and Regulation
Provider: Faculty of Science

Activity no.: 5126-26-00-00	There are 21 available seats
	Enrollment deadline: 01/02/2026

Place	Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences
Date and time	16.03.2026, at: 09:00 - 25.03.2026, at: 16:00
Regular seats	25
Lecturers	Nina Cedergreen
ECTS credits	5.00

Contact person	Nina Cedergreen E-mail address: ncf@plen.ku.dk

Enrolment Handling/Course Organiser	PhD Administration SCIENCE E-mail address: phdcourses@science.ku.dk

Enrolment guidelines This is a specialised course where 50% of the seats are reserved to PhD students enrolled at the Faculty of SCIENCE at UCPH and 50% of the seats are reserved to other applicants. Seats will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis and according to the applicable rules. Anyone can apply for the course, but if you are not a PhD student at a Danish university (except CBS), you will be placed on the waiting list until enrollment deadline. After the enrollment deadline, available seats will be allocated to applicants on the waiting list. Aim and Content This course covers the science behind the development of pesticides, their use in agricultural environments, common modes of action of chemical pesticides and new modes of action of biopesticides and biotechnological pesticides, their effect on humans and the environment and their regulation. The importance of mode of action of pesticides will be stressed and linked to chemical properties, uptake, translocation, and metabolism in target and non-target organisms. These physico-chemical properties of pesticides will be linked to their environmental impacts and fate. The evolution of pesticide resistance will be addressed by considering how this compromises normal pesticide action. The principles of assessing insecticide activity of both chemical and biotechnological insecticides in a beetle model system will be an integral part of the course. Statistical treatment of own experimental data, both binary (e.g. mobile/immobile, pupates/do not pupate) and gradual or nominal data (e.g. growth, feeding, locomotion behavior, reproduction), using the software R and interpreting the data with focus on mode of action of the insecticide will be an important aspect of the course. We focus on aquatic and terrestrial ecotoxicology in relation to pesticide loads, intentional and not intentional discharge in the environment and also the ecotoxicological effects of pesticides on populations and communities. Risk assessment of the pesticide use is evaluated in relation to ecotoxicology, and the national and international registration systems. An excursion to CropLife Denmark and their Experimental Farm will be arranged. The curriculum considers the advantages and disadvantages of pesticide use and teaches students to critically interpret data to enable a science-based approach to pesticide development, use, registration and regulation. Learning outcomes Intended learning outcome for the students who complete the course: Knowledge: • Know how chemical and physical properties of pesticides affect uptake, distribution, metabolisation and excretion of pesticides in plants and animals • Know the site and mode of action of exemplary pesticides representing the most used pesticide groups: herbicides, fungicides and insecticides with a focus on the two latter • Know the principles of pesticide use in crops and for non-agricultural purposes (pest and vector control) including resistance risks, application technologies, and pesticide effects on both target and non-target organisms • Recognize different data types (binary and gradual endpoints) and know how to analyze them • Know the rationale behind pesticide development, risk assessment and registration • Know how to perform experiments testing insecticides with different modes of action in beetles Skills: • Set up experiments to test for the effect of insecticides on target or non-target organisms • Experience with the statistical programming software R • Perform statistical analysis and biological interpretation of dose-response data from bioassays with various endpoints • Find and select valid database values for toxicities and use these to assess risk of individual pesticides • Evaluate toxicity data in a regulatory context • Apply quantitative methods to assess pesticide load, drift and fate in organisms and environment • Know how to collect data from both databases on pesticides and from laboratory experiments, use different digital tools, and statistical models to treat the data, and to critically interpret data and their associated uncertainties based on statistics and a weight-of-evidence approach. Competences: • Evaluate pesticide applications to target and non-target organisms in the terrestrial aquatic environments • Put various theories and principles of pesticide action into perspective and make sound judgment of impact of pesticides on different environments • Extrapolate knowledge from chemical pesticides to knowledge on biological or biotechnological pesticides and identify knowledge gabs • Discuss pesticide use from a scientific stand in view of its controversial issue in the public • Understand how knowledge of adverse effects on humans and the environment is used in the risk assessment and legislation of pesticides in Europe. Target Group The course aims to fill knowledge gabs for PhDs from an NNF-Challenge program consortium (ENSAFE) with 10 PhD students. In addition students from the two NNF-Challenge Programs “One Crop Health” and “Embarq” may also find the course attractive, as it will be attractive to PhD students who also work with new types of Plant Protection (microbials, or biotechnological plant protection products), but lack knowledge on Plant Protection. Recommended Academic Qualifications The students must have a background in biology, biotechnology, agronomy or similar natural science MSc’s. Basic knowledge in chemistry, data treatment and the use of R is an advantage. Research Area Crop Protection – Agriculture Chemistry/biology/statistics Teaching and Learning Methods The course will be a mixture of lectures, theoretical exercises done in groups and reviewed together, and a practical experiment in the laboratory. The laboratory exercise will be a dose-response experiment on mustard beetles, testing both traditional chemical and new biotechnological insecticides. You will monitor growth, feeding activity, organism locomotor behavior, and survival on a daily basis, and treat data in R to obtain traditional endpoints such as NOECs, LOECs, and dose-response parameters at different points in time. But you will also work with dynamic models of toxic effects in time such as the General Unified Threshold model of Survival (GUTS) and other models to be able to discuss pro’s and con’s of different approaches to detect toxic effects. The data will be presented on the last day of the course and the consequences of the mode of action of the different insecticides on different endpoints and their time course of development will be discussed. The results will be presented in a report. We aim to also have an excursion to the field station of CropLife Denmark to hear more about Crop Protection in Practise. Type of Assessment Approved report putting the experimental results into a theoretical perspective. Literature Pesticides and the Environment https://www.wisdomofthemoose.com/pesticides-and-the-environment-textbook Lab-protocol for Beetle Assays Selected Scientific Literature Course coordinator Nina Cedergreen Guest Lecturers Center of Ecology & Hydrology in the UK may participate with an external lecturer giving 10% of the course. Dates Week 12+13, 2026 - March 16th – 25th, both days included Expected frequency Only in 2026 Course location Frederiksberg Campus Course fee • Participant fee: 5000 DKK • PhD student enrolled at SCIENCE: 0 DKK • PhD student from Danish PhD school Open market: 0 DKK • PhD student from Danish PhD school not Open market: 6000 DKK • PhD student from foreign university: 6000 DKK • Master's student from Danish university: 0 DKK • Master's student from foreign university: 6000 DKK • Non-PhD student employed at a university (e.g., postdocs): 6000 DKK • Non-PhD student not employed at a university (e.g., from a private company): 16.800 DKK Cancellation policy • Cancellations made up to two weeks before the course starts are free of charge. • Cancellations made less than two weeks before the course starts will be charged a fee of DKK 3.000 • Participants with less than 80% attendance cannot pass the course and will be charged a fee of DKK 5.000 • No-show will result in a fee of DKK 5.000 • Participants who fail to hand in any mandatory exams or assignments cannot pass the course and will be charged a fee of DKK 5.000 Course fee and participant fee PhD courses offered at the Faculty of SCIENCE have course fees corresponding to different participant types. In addition to the course fee, there might also be a participant fee. If the course has a participant fee, this will apply to all participants regardless of participant type - and in addition to the course fee.

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