104 / SEEDWORLD.COM DECEMBER 2018 WHERE ON THE WEB Visit the International Seed Morphology Association’s website at idseed.org HOW ISMA WILL FIT INTO THE BIGGER PICTURE The International Seed Morphology Association (ISMA) is a scientific organization to share knowledge and develop resources to provide technical support for seed testing, and by extension, the accuracy of and compliance to those seed testing rules or seed quality standards developed by international standard setting organizations like the International Seed Testing Association, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and International Plant Protection Convention. These organizations develop “what” is required, and ISMA will develop “how” to perform the required seed identification assessment. ISMA will also support national seed regulations and plant protection regulations or policies. ISMA will offer support for the assessment, compliance and implementation of standards, regulations or quality assessments related to seed identification. Source: ISMA. seeds and find new uses for them. This ISMA website is a truly universal tool with a wide range of applications,” Allen says. He explains that most U.S. states main- tain their own lists of prohibited weeds. This makes things very complicated for seed businesses wanting to expand beyond state lines. “A seed analyst from North Carolina might never have seen some of the weed seeds from the other side of the country. It can take days to identify seeds they found during testing. One of the solu- tions right now is to send a sample to our lab for identification, but this adds time and expense. It puts a delay on seed that should have been sold yesterday. ISMA will help in this area by developing tools that can be used by anyone to identify seeds they find.” ISMA also plans to produce a range of other tools (including fact sheets and facilitating peer support) to help anyone concerned with seed morphology. This will help to improve their knowledge of a crucial field, which Diederichsen notes has declined in recently years due to the rise of genomics and other new technolo- gies that he observes often take attention away from the importance of morphol- ogy in identifying seed. According to Stuppy, ISMA will essen- tially offer a one-stop shop for those working in seed morphology. “Identification of seed contaminants, especially of invasive or potentially inva- sive species, is extremely important. Until now, the expertise and the knowledge needed for seed identification has been scattered across the world and hundreds if not thousands of individual publications. ISMA will provide both access to a wide spectrum of seed morphological informa- tion and related tools as well as to provide contacts to specialists in the field.” SW