3rd edition of the UPOV Working Party on Test Methods and Techniques

The 3rd TWM (Technical Working Party on Testing Methods and Techniques) of UPOV (International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants) took place in Beijing from 28 April to 1 May 2025. These meetings provide an opportunity to discuss statistical methods, phenotyping and genotyping applicable to DUS studies. Two representatives from GEVES participated in this TWM: René Mathis and Aurore Philibert.

Prior to this TWM, a workshop was organised on 26 and 27 April 2025. Each participating country had the opportunity to present its current use of phenotyping and genotyping techniques for DUS. The countries represented were China, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and France via GEVES.

The TWM programme included a series of 30 scientific presentations on methods under development. This major meeting was enriched by several visits, notably to the Vegetable and Flower Institute, which hosted the workshop and the TWM, and to the Centre for Science and Technology Development, both of which are part of the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. The visits also included the Plant Variety Protection Office, the DUS and GMO detection laboratories, and the fully automated phenotyping facility for collections.

These six days of seminars and visits enabled GEVES to reconnect with the community, forge new links with statisticians from other examination offices and discover the progress made in genotyping and phenotyping research in the other countries represented.

The next TWM session will take place in Cambridge from 1 to 4 June 2026.