1876
Frederich Nobbe published his famous Handbook of Seed Science and the motto of the meeting held in Hamburg that year was “uniformity in seed testing”. This later became the International Seed Testing Association (ISTA) logo.
1924
26 countries participated in the meeting in Cambridge and the International Seed Testing Association was founded.
1931
At the request of FIS (ISF), ISTA adopted the first International Rules of Seed Testing, as well as establishing the ISTA Certificates Scheme.
1950
ISTA Congress was held in Washington D.C., the first outside Europe, and demonstrated that, after 13 years of interruption by the Second World War, ISTA was indispensable to seed business.
1995
During the ISTA Congress held in Copenhagen, ISTA Membership was opened to private laboratories and private seed companies.
1996
To ensure harmonized seed testing worldwide, ISTA initiated the Quality Assurance Programme to accredit seed testing laboratories. The first ISTA Member Laboratory was audited under the new set-up in this year.
2004
During the ISTA Congress held in Budapest, it was agreed to consider accreditation as purely technical task, and the responsibility to give authorization to issue ISTA International Seed Analysis Certificates was given to the ISTA Executive Committee.
2024
Machine vision testing policy approved and use of artificial intelligence (AI) systems being discussed.
QA well-established; some laboratories having their 9th or 10th ISTA audit.
ISTA eCertificates soon!
