Based on our long-standing experience in agro-environmental systems facing a changing environment, including soil, plants and atmosphere, we address pressing fundamental and applied research questions supporting future food-security and safety and the sustainable use of resources. We are interested in collaborations targeting the development of alternative pest management in agricultural and horticultural systems, with a specific focus on the development, validation, and formulation of microbial-derived biopesticides. This is supported by our long-standing experience in multi-trophic interactions in plant protection, focused on sap-sucking insects like whiteflies as vector of quarantine plant pathogens in our biosafety level laboratories. We have several bioactive molecules leads to be tested and incorporated into biopesticide formulations. All activities benefit by several molecular technologies and approaches. The competences of our group members ranging from crop and soil scientists, molecular plant pathologists and entomologists, climatologists, biotechnologists as well as a team of highly motivated technicians. Our experiments are covering the whole chain from the development at lab scale via biodiscovery and greenhouse experiments up to open field validations.