2 SEED TESTING INTERNATIONAL www.seedtest.org FURTHER ACTIVITIES IN STRATEGIC AREAS ONE FOCUS OF THE ISTA STRATEGY 2025–2028 is to grow the Association in Africa and Latin America. Concentrating on regions where ISTA is underrepresented, showed clear success in Asia over recent years. As an example, in this issue you will find seven newly accredited ISTA laboratories, five of which are from Asia. This success should be repeated in Africa and Latin America. A great start to this focus was the ISTA Quality Assurance Workshop for Beginners in Senegal, for francophone African countries, held in November last year (see STI 171, p. 52). The workshop was repeated in July this year in Mexico, for Spanish-speaking countries in Central America and the Caribbean. You can read about these events in the next issue of Seed Testing International. I would personally like to thank the lecturers (Florina Palada, Corinne Guimier and Joël Léchappé for Senegal, and Vanessa Sosa and Ignacio Aranciaga for Mexico) for their engagement. Not to forget Andreea Nicoleta Pinar for the organisation, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) for fully sponsoring both events. Together with the ISTA Advocates in all three regions, we will follow up on these successful projects. Concerning Africa and Latin America, the ISTA Executive Committee (ECOM) have decided to hold their future February ECOM meetings in the regions to make closer contact with international, regional and local partners to foster the process of collaboration. The 2027 ECOM meeting will be held in Harare, Zimbabwe, and the 2028 meeting in Montevideo, Uruguay. For Africa we have started to work closely with the African Seed Trade Association (AfSTA), for whom I was asked to be an official observer to their board meetings, allowing quick access to our stakeholders. A first event was a joint webinar on ISTA membership and accreditation benefits for African countries. I am thankful that this webinar could be run by African ISTA members (Claid Mujaju [ZW01], ECOM member Claudia Falch [ZA06] and Mamadou Ndoye [SN01]) sharing their experiences. The newly formed Strategic Advisory Panel (SAP) has also started to work on this topic, especially their members of the regions (Innocent Namahoranye, Chair of SAP from Rwanda, Joseph Ahenda from Kenya, Silmar Peske from Brazil and Diego Risso from Uruguay). We will keep you updated on the success in implementing this part of the ISTA Strategy. Please enjoy browsing this latest issue of Seed Testing International where you will find more information on other interesting topics. All the best, Andreas Wais Seed Testing International No. 172 October 2026 ISSN 1999-5229 Produced on behalf of the ISTA Executive Committee The views and opinions expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the International Seed Testing Association (ISTA). Every effort is made to ensure the published text is accurate. ISTA shall not be liable in any way for possible errors or omissions. ISTA makes no expressed or implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose or otherwise, concerning the use of any product or representation that is expressed or implied. In addition ISTA shall not be liable in any manner whatsoever for direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, or punitive damage resulting from the use of, access of, or inability to use this information. No endorsement of any non-ISTA products or services mentioned in this publication is given or implied by ISTA. Chief Editor Andreas Wais Editor Yoana Uzunova, Sejal Patel International Seed Testing Association (ISTA) ISTA Secretariat Richtiarkade 18 8304 Wallisellen Switzerland Phone: +41 44 838 60 00 Fax: +41 44 838 60 01 Email: sti@ista.ch Internet: www.seedtest.org Publication date: October 2026 Circulation: 1553 No. of copies printed: 1675 Seed Testing International No. 173 Deadline for article submission: 15th January 2027 Instructions to contributors: www.seedtest.org/en/publications/ seed-testing-international.html Follow ISTA To subscribe to STI: FROM THE EDITOR
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