IRRI Seed Health and Logistics Unit leads quality management and cost recovery systems implementation across the CGIAR CoP at the 7th CGIAR GHU Workshop

CIAT, COLOMBIA, 15 April 2024 — Germplasm/Seed health units staff members from various CGIAR centers, including the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), meet once again for the 7th International Workshop of the CGIAR Germplasm Health Units, held from 15-19 April at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) Headquarters in Palmira, Colombia.

The Germplasm Health Units (GHUs) provide phytosanitary services to genebanks and to the CGIAR’s Agri-food System CRPs, ensuring their products are free of pests and diseases that pose a  quarantine risk. They have a crucial role in monitoring germplasm health and ensuring disease-free materials are supplied to seed systems for multiplication and distribution to farmers.

The workshop brought together participants from 11 CGIAR centers to review the objectives and action plans of the GHUs groups, their community of practice, and their phytosanitary diagnostic activities, including germplasm evaluation of seed and clonal crops, quality management systems, seed treatments, emerging pests and diseases,  process improvement, capacity and cost recovery, and proposals for inter-center projects in plant pathogens.

Participants reviewed the progress of their units, sharing current challenges as well as strategies to achieve their goals. Throughout the week, innovative strategies emerged, HTS studies on cryptic viruses in clonal crops were discussed, together with the setup of a cross center ring-test for evaluation of novel seed treatment protocols for phytosanitation. Thus, continuous improvement and best practices for maintaining seed health and managing pests were explored effectively.

IRRI’s GHU, the Seed Health and Logistics Unit (SHU), participated in the workshop and presented the plans for cross center  Quality Management System (QMS) alignment in compliance with International Standards for Phytosanitary Measures (ISPM 45 and ISO/IEC 17025:2017). This endeavor shall further raise GHUs, and  CGIAR, position as the global leaders in safe transboundary movement of germplasm through effective  sampling,  evaluation and sanitation.

SHU participated in the QMS alignment of the CGIAR GHU centers, which standardize the GHU processes in compliance with the international standards for phytosanitary measures. SHU also presented a cross-center implementation project and shared best practices for cost recovery in conformance to CGIAR statutory requirements. Ms. Sheryl Catausan, associate manager, and Dr. Martina Castellion, SHU senior manager, were IRRI representatives and resource persons to the event.

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