ISTA General Assembly 2023 in Verona
ISTA held its annual general meeting in Verona at the end of May, oranised by CREA (Italian examination office) and the Carabinieri (in particular, the national centre for the study and conservation of forest biodiversity, an ISTA member laboratory based in Verona).
Around 175 people from 44 countries took part in this annual meeting, which began with a seminar entitled “From biodiversity to diversification: resources, tools and technologies to meet new challenges”. ISTA’s technical committees presented their activity reports, and held open sessions and internal working meetings for committee members. All seminar presentations and activity reports are available online on the ISTA website.
The General Assembly provided an opportunity for the ISTA secretariat and the Executive Committee to present their work and achievements, including: the introduction of methods for tropical and sub-tropical species, a strategy for developing methods for testing seed health quality, a development strategy for countries which are not yet ISTA members, a revised accreditation standard, the project to introduce e-certificates, etc.
The vote of the designated authorities enabled certain methods to be developed, in particular: the revision of the maximum size of sublots of Solanum lycopersicum L., a method for determining seed weight, the non-obligation to conduct a dormancy break when fresh seed is found at the end of a germination test, a tetrazolium test method for Ulmus spp, the merging of parts 1 and 2 of Table 9A (Moisture content), etc. All the changes voted on can be found in the document “GMO23-05 Rules Proposals for ISTA 2024 Edition” available on the ISTA website.
Also of note was the vote to increase the price of ISTA certificates in paper format from CHF 3.25 to CHF 4.00, which should enable ISTA to maintain projects such as Young@ISTA, subsidies for specific projects, methods for tropical species, etc.
Next year, ISTA will celebrate its 100th anniversary and will be welcomed in Cambridge to celebrate its birthday a century later in the city where it was founded!
