The Netherlands
27 January 2014

TESTA is a 3-year EU-project to develop seed treatment methods, evidence for seed transmission and methods for assessment of seed health. On January 14-15 2014 the second meeting of TESTA was hosted by Naktuinbouw in Roelofarendsveen, The Netherlands, one of the partners of the TESTA-project. Experts of all 13 partners attended the meeting as well as representatives of the advisory board.

John van Ruiten, the director of Naktuinbouw welcomed all partners and informed them about the broad activities at Naktuinbouw in inspection, Plant Breeders' Rights and seed health testing. During the meeting the progress of the first year in all 7 work packages was presented by the work package leaders together with an outlook for the coming year(s). Good news was that although the availability of contaminated seeds was considered a risk for several workpackages within TESTA, for most projects contaminated seed was available or produced by now. Contact with the industry was very important in this respect, as well as for the workpackage on disinfection research and validation of seed health methods. Within the TESTA project the annotated list of seed-transmitted diseases is being updated on the ISTA website, a large, important project for the industry and it is agreed now to work in collaboration with International Seed Health Initiative for Vegetable crops (ISHI-Veg) on this.

The program also allowed time for discussion in small groups on work package level, for the management board meeting and reflections by the advisory board. The evening program gave opportunity to take more time to get to know each other and talk in small groups on TESTA and other matters while enjoying a walk through the historic centre of Leiden and a nice dinner. The interesting two-day meeting ended with tours in the seed health laboratory and the greenhouses of Naktuinbouw.

For more information see www.seedtesta.eu

Website: http://www.naktuinbouw.nl

Published: January 27, 2014