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Held in Prague, Czech Republic
October 20 - 22, 2003
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42 participants from 20 countries recently attended the third ever ISTA 'Forest Tree Seed Testing Workshop' in Prague, Czech Republic between October 20-22 2003. (Previous venues were Guildford, England, 1973 and Macon, Georgia, U.S.A, 1989).
This latest meeting was built on the successes of those earlier and was an ideal mix of practical exercises, demonstrations, presentations and discussion sessions. After the meeting there was an opportunity to choose between a 1-day trip to the State Tree Seed Centre in Tyniste nad Orlici or a 3-day tour which visited seed testing, processing and storage facilities in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
The list of participants can be downloaded and the programme for the meeting is also available. Participants not only enjoyed formal instruction on Purity, Germination, Tetrazolium, Excised Embryo and Germination testing, but also made the most of the opportunity to engage in plenty of informal discussion and information exchange. Lively conversations could always be overheard at tea-breaks, meal times, on coach trips - and in the bar (when solutions to many anomalies became so much clearer!)
A number of practical tips on testing methods were swapped between participants and proposals were drawn-up and agreed on to introduce new test methods and species into the ISTA Rules at the next Congress. Specific examples of the latter include i) editorial changes to Pinus densiflora, P. strobus and Eucalyptus species; ii) clarification of the term 'double germination test'; and iii) the addition of Pinus brutia to the Rules. The third example provides the recently revised European Union Directive on Forest Reproductive Material with a suitable 'internationally accepted (seed testing) technique' for this species which would otherwise not exist.
It was calculated that there was the equivalent of 800 years worth of tree seed testing experience gathered in Prague. Every participant went home with lots of new knowledge, plenty of happy memories …. and a list of 41 potential contacts with whom to share that next interesting tree seed testing anomaly!
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ACKNOWLDEGEMENTS
Thanks go to all attendees for their active participation and involvement throughout the meeting.
Further thanks go to the chair persons, practical session leaders, speakers and demonstrators. The high quality of the meeting was a clear reflection of their considerable expertise, conscientious preparation and well developed communication skills. Thanks also to Ing. Yveta Sefrnova, Ing. Miroslav Houba and Dr. Zdenka Polanecka at the Agricultural Seed Testing Laboratory (CZDL03) we visited; to Ing. Zdenek Kiesenbauer of the Dendrological Gardens of the Research Institute of Ornamental Gardening; Ing. Zdenka Hlavova and Ing. Martin Plasil from the Tree Seed Centre in Tyniste nad Orlici; Ing. Katarina Chvalova and her colleagues from Semenoles (Slovakian Tree Seed Centre); and Dr. Elena Foffova and her colleagues from the Slovakian Tree Seed Testing Station (SKDL02).
Very special thanks go to Dr Zdenka Prochazkova and her colleagues from the 'Forestry and Game Management Research Institute' of the Czech Republic for organising such a successful, memorable and thoroughly enjoyable combination of events. For further information please contact the ISTA Secretariat or visit the Forest Tree Committee webpage.
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| By Peter Gosling (April 2004) |
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