Seed Health and Pathology

Scope

Identify and prioritize key topical areas regarding seed health and phytosanitary that would lead to increased alignment of pest targets and detection methods among countries and companies.

Priorities

1. Evaluation and/or development of testing technologies to differentiate infectious vs. non-infectious pest particles, enabling conclusions about efficacy of seed treatments for non-culturable pest targets.
2. Determine the threshold of pathogen contamination to cause economic significance under varying environmental conditions, inoculum sources and seed infection rates, using this information to determine needed detection capability for SH/phytosanitary methods.
3. Establish on-going funding to increase the training of broadly trained seed pathologists with research outcomes that embrace new technology but are also balanced against biological relevance.