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Introduction
Germination is a basic and one of the oldest criteria for seed quality evaluation. Within ISTA, many studies have been carried out in 80 years or so. Nowadays, the ISTA rules for germination offer a few thousands of equivalent alternative methods for more than 600 species covering the Agricultural and Vegetable species, Tree and Shrubs, Flower, Spice, Herb and Medicinal species. The germination test methods are more or less the same since the beginning of the 20th century: to germinate seed samples in a substrate, in controlled environmental conditions.
The aims of the Germination Committee are mainly:
- To update and contribute to improve the test methods in application of the increasing knowledge, the technical and technological progresses or the regulations requests as ISTA standard of accreditation, ISO 17025…
- To improve the rules in chapter 5 of the ISTA rules
- To create training material e.g. Handbooks
- To introduce method for species not covered by the rules. A specific attention will be brought to tropical and subtropical species.
- To share the knowledge among laboratories and seed testing people to facilitate the exchange and improve the standardisation.
The committee has recently produced a new handbook for seedling evaluation (authors: R. Don, G. Mac Larren), and has revised the structure of the substrate part of the germination chapter. This included the extension of the authorised substrates to mixtures of mineral and organic compounds.
The work is done within working groups gathering experts and voluntary people from all origanisations interested in sharing experience. Close links exist with other committees (flower, tree and shrub, statistics) and with the ISTA accreditation department.
The committee is very interested in listening and sharing suggestions from all.
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ISTA / ISF Experiment on Herbage Seed Lot Size
Technical Protocol and participating companies
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Next issue of
SEED TESTING INTERNATIONAL (ISTA News Bulletin) No. 139 April 2010
coming up soon!
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Outcome on the
World food security: urgent measures on seed needed
Second World Seed Conference 2009
held September 8-10,
in Rome, Italy
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ISTA Seed Mixture Experiment
to collect information that may be used to determine the reliability of seed mixture test results and establish tolerances.
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Universal List of Species
ISTA list of 130 plant species that accredited laboratories may wish to include in their seed collections
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Position Paper on
ISTA's view regarding the units for the reporting of quantitative results on presence of seeds with specified traits in conventional seed lots
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Accreditation Documents for the Testing of Specified Traits
Related Documents for download
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ISTA's Memorandum of Understanding with FAO
Read the full Press Release
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REPORTS from the
ISTA Annual Meeting June 15-18, 2009 Glattbrugg, Switzerland
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