GEVES shares its expertise in vigour testing and digital imaging worldwide

APSA and ISTA have organised a Seed Vigour Testing Workshop in collaboration with Department of Agriculture (DoA) in Thailand.

The workshop was held in Bangkok 26-28 September at Kasertsart University and was attended by 49 participants from 8 countries: Thailand (31), Philippines (3), Hong Kong, China (1), Malaysia (1), Myanmar (2), India (7), Indonesia (3), Vietnam (1); 35 attendees coming from private sector and 14 from governmental institutes.

The three-day agenda has been led by four members of ISTA’s Vigour Committee: Alison Powell chair of the Committee from University of Aberdeen (UK), Hulya Ilbi, vice-chair from Ege University (Turkey), Stan Matthews from University of Aberdeen (UK) and Marie-Hélène Wagner from GEVES (France), members.

They featured eight lectures and facilitated discussions on several topics including appropriate test conditions and how developing new vigour tests.

Ten practical hands-on were carried out using Vigour methods recommended in ISTA Rules but on species of interest for participants, namely sweet corn, Cucurbits and Solanaceae vegetables. A tremendous preparative work has been done by the staff of DoA helped by two seed companies to set up a total of 200 vigour tests: controlled deterioration tests for tomato, sweet pepper and melon, electro-conductivity tests for melon and radish, radicle emergence tests for sweet corn, radish and cucumber and for accelerated ageing test for melon, with enough seed material for 10 groups of 4-5 people. In other words, it was difficult to move between the tables, but the atmosphere was studious and friendly.

Interesting and consistent results were obtained within and between groups. They were analysed and used to provide a global discussion on method validation program during the last day.