GEVES in Turkey for the UPOV Vegetable Working Group
From 2 to 5 May, the UPOV (Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants) Technical Working Party on Vegetables (TWV) met in Antalya (Turkey). This meeting was the first face-to-face meeting since the Covid pandemic and provided an opportunity to work on the revision of 23 DUS Test Guidelines and to reconnect and exchange information on different topics in a more efficient and structured way than by video conference.
The last face-to-face TWV session was held in 2019, and this meeting was highly-anticipated – especially by Turkish colleagues – as it was initially planned for spring 2022. More than 25 people attended, representing 15 countries and organisations. At the same time, about 30 people were also connected remotely for this “hybrid” TWV. 18 DUS Test Guidelines were discussed for partial revision (carrot, lettuce, melon, spinach, courgette, mache, cabbage…), five Test Guidelines for a full revision (tomato, chilli, Chinese cabbage, kale and parsley) and about ten more transversal documents were worked on. In addition to contributing to these guideline revisions, GEVES has made a major contribution over the past few months and following this meeting, to the finalisation of a framework document on UPOV characterisation of varietal disease resistance.
In addition to this programme, the organisers also wanted to give participants time to reconnect and exchange information with each other. For this purpose, technical visits were organised: a visit to two leading companies on the Turkish market and a visit to one of the Ministry of Agriculture’s seed certification centres. Indeed, Antalya was chosen for this TWV due to the area’s important production of greenhouse vegetables, in particular Solanaceae and Cucurbitaceae. Most international seed companies are present in this region.
