El Batán, Mexico
April, 2007
Source:
CIMMYT E-News, vol 4 no.
4 - April 2007
SIDU + ISO = Quality assured
The Seed Health Laboratory, part of CIMMYT’s Seed Inspection and
Distribution Unit (SIDU) has become the first in the
Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research
(CGIAR) to gain International Organization for Standardization
(ISO) certification.
 For
the past 10 months there has been a little extra edge at the
Seed Health Laboratory at the CIMMYT campus in El Batán, Mexico.
Everything every researcher and technician did when handling
maize and wheat seeds was being scrutinized in the minutest
detail by inspection teams from the Mexican Accreditation Entity
(EMA) for the ISO. “It was sometimes tense, but I knew our
procedures were already at a high level, so I wasn’t really
worried,” says Monica Mezzalama, head of SIDU.
The routine shipment and reception of maize and wheat seed
samples is the life blood of a global breeding center like
CIMMYT. Its crop improvement research means breeding new types
of seed that can enhance the livelihoods and food security of
farm families in the developing world. You can improve all the
seed you want at an experiment station, but eventually you have
to ship seed for testing by farmers and national research
programs outside of the country where the breeding was done.
Also, given that CIMMYT holds the world’s largest collection of
maize and wheat germplasm in trust in its genetic resources
center, each year it sends hundreds of shipments of seed from
those stores to breeders and other researchers from around the
world, in response to their requests for samples.
Seed can carry pathogens—viruses, bacteria, or fungi—that reduce
the viability of the seed itself or prevent the plants from
growing well. When seed is consumed directly as food or feed,
seed-borne organisms may cause chemical changes, degrade seed
contents, or release powerful toxins that can harm humans and
livestock. In the best of cases, food is simply wasted; in the
worst, famine or poisoning can result. Certain seed-borne
pathogens are endemic to specific areas of the world; great
efforts are made to confine them and not allow their spread.
In 1989 CIMMYT established an independent Seed Health Laboratory
and in 2004 the seed inspection and distribution unit (SIDU) to
handle the inspection and shipment of seed, essentially ensuring
that no seed with disease pathogens on board enters the center’s
breeding programs or leaves its premises for other destinations.
All CGIAR research centers with crop genetic resource
collections produce and distribute seed from breeding trials or
from their genebanks. All maintain their own, stringent
standards and have shared their experiences. Until recently,
seed health standards at CIMMYT were self-imposed, in
cooperation with the government of Mexico. The implementation of
free trade agreements between Mexico and other
countries—particularly the USA and Canada—brought a commitment
from Mexico to ensure that all seed originating from the country
conformed to international norms.
The ISO is the world's largest developer of standards. ISO
standards have important economic and social repercussions,
making a positive difference not just to organizations for whom
they solve basic problems in production and distribution, but to
society as a whole. Mexico adopted ISO standards for seed
movement, to be administered by EMA. For CIMMYT it is the
ISO/IEC 17025-2005 General requirements for the competence of
testing and calibration laboratories. “We knew all along that
our seed health procedures were the best,” says Masa Iwanaga,
CIMMYT Director General. “But having the toughest outside
inspection in the world confirm what we knew is very gratifying,
not only for us but for our partners in more than an hundred
countries.” |
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