Phytosanitary workshop

February 2021 
Within the framework of the GenRes Bridge, Horizon2020 project,  this workshop was organized to raise awareness among genetic resources stakeholders and initiate a discussion on phytosanitary issues relevant for genetic resources conservation and sustainable use. 

The workshop was held online on 24 February 2021 and preceded by a series of four webinars, videos of which are available at the GenRes Bridge website. 

Summary of the workshop

The workshop was attended by 35 participants representing the plant, animal and forest genetic resources domains, which discussed relevant (phyto-)sanitary regulations and highlighted issues affecting GR collections especially. Four case studies described current issues affecting ex situ seed and fruit tree field collections, proposed updates for import regulatory guidelines for Vitis germplasm and highlighted the detrimental effect of pests on forest genetic resources in Europe. Participants further confirmed the importance of effectively managing phytosanitary risks at an acceptable level and providing the quality assurances necessary to ensure that GR collections can be maintained and genetic material safely exchanged. Potential collaborative actions were identified to collectively move into a direction of increased safety with appropriate and ideally harmonized protocols. The results of this workshop will be communicated to the regulatory agencies for further cooperation and feed into the developing European Genetic Resources Strategy and domain-specific strategies and their approaches to ensure and improve conservation and sustainable use of GR by 2030. 

Main takeaways from the workshop and proposed actions are summarized in the report. 

• Report (469,0 KB)
• Case Studies:
  • Case study 1: Phytosanitary regulations affecting ex situ seed collections (1,5 MB)
    Presenter: Willem van Dooijeweert (CGN, the Netherlands) 
  • Case study 2: Fruit Tree Genetic Resources: from maintaining to sharing material through Europe – issues with quarantine and regulated non quarantine pests (3,7 MB)
    Presenters: Daniela Giovannini (CREA, Italy), Marc Lateur (CRA-W, Belgium) and Matthew Ordidge (Univ. of Reading, UK) 
  • Case study 3: Developing a proposal for phytosanitary regulation for import of Vitis germplasm to the EU (2,5 MB)
    Presenter: Osvaldo Failla (Univ. of Milan, Italy)
  • Case study 4: Phytosanitary measures – are they enough to protect our forests? (1,8 MB)
    Presenter: Barbara Piškur (GIS, Slovenia)