In 1989 South Tyrol released as one of the first areas of fruit production in Europe a program for integrated pome fruit production and influenced therefore largely the following developments in this sector. By the end of 1989, 9 European Countries had already issued 14 IP-guidelines and by the end of 1995 there were 31 national resp. regional IP-programs in Europe. Nowadays it is estimated that about 45% of the European fruit-growing areas are being cultivated according to the rules of integrated production; the respective IP-programs follow the IOBC's "Guidelines for Integrated Production of Pome Fruits in Europe"¹ (1994), but their priorities vary according to the different regional requirements and site related problems.

In spite of the production and marketing necessities, the introduction and application of the Integrated Production according to the AGRIOS-program met many difficulties in South Tyrol, since both growers and packing houses had a sceptical and doubtful attitude towards a concept which established precise rules for the participants². In 1989 only 929 farms with 1824 ha and 44 packing houses joined the AGRIOS-Program, and therefore no IP-label was released. A massive information campaign during the winter 1989/1990 brought the expected breakthrough, and in 1990 5.902 farms with 13.167 ha and 56 packing houses decided to take part in the program. In 1991 the participation in the AGRIOS-Program reached the highest figure on record (6.844 farms with 14.755 ha and 58 packing houses: 86,8% of the total pome fruit production area³). Locally confined problems with pest management (resistance of the codling moth, the May beetle plague and the increased presence of the mealy bug from 1991 to 1995) were followed by a remarkable oscillation in the enrolment rate resp. in the percentage of fruit which eventually got the recognition as integrated fruit. Since 1996 the interest in the AGRIOS-program is again increasing. The in 2003 enrolled IP-area (15.484 ha resp. 86% of the total fruit growing area) indicates an increasing amount of fruit produced according to the AGRIOS-guidelines.
In spite of the criticism which pointed out that the 1st edition of the AGRIOS-program was much stricter (and less flexible) that today's guidelines and which considered the alleviation of the program as the only possible explanation for the increased application of the guidelines, the experiences that have been made during the last years (resistance in front of a too restrict list of pesticides) and the development and introduction of a series of new biotechnological (mating disruption), biological and chemical plant protection measures (grow- and development-regulators, ergosterol biosynthetic inhibitors EBI's) turned the AGRIOS-Program into a feasible option for the major part of the South Tyrolean farmers.