The International Seed Testing Association (ISTA) was invited by Niab to host its 100-year anniversary meeting and celebrations at the Cambridge Union Society and Cambridge Guildhall in July 2024. Niab's Helen Appleyard explains more about the celebrations...
ISTA was created, with a vision of achieving uniformity of seed testing worldwide, during the 4th International Seed Testing Congress, held at the National Institute of Agricultural Botany in 1924 and chaired by Niab’s founder Sir Lawrence Weaver. With 26 countries at the inauguration ISTA was founded with a mission to develop and publish standard procedures for seed sampling and testing.
Since its beginnings ISTA has continued to uphold standards in seed testing, publishing the International Rules for Seed Testing annually and developing its own quality assurance standard and accreditation scheme in the 1990s.
ISTA has grown and now has 83 member countries, with 244 member laboratories – 150 accredited to ISTA’s quality assurance standard. ISTA’s work lies at the heart of the global effort for food security for all, by ensuring the integrity of seed quality assessment processes, which in turn gives farmers access to high quality seed.
The first ISTA meeting at Niab in 1924...
...and delegates from the 2024 ISTA Centenary Meeting visit Niab at Park Farm
The Official Seed Testing Station for England and Wales (OSTS) at Niab helped to organise the ISTA Centennial Meeting and held an international workshop on seed purity and seed identification for 24 seed analysts from Europe and South Africa at Niab Park Farm. The OSTS is proud to be an ISTA accredited laboratory and has been involved with ISTA from its inception.
The Centennial Meeting’s first day seminar ‘Seed quality assurance: a critical component of food and nutritional security’ was opened by Niab CEO Professor Mario Caccamo with guest speakers Rosie Riby, from the Agricultural Industries Confederation, Fera’s Victoria Barton FERA and Niab’s Professor Ji Zhou. The seminar covered the topics of seed storage, importance of germination testing, high throughput sequencing for pathogen detection and variety identification for traceability.
The Conference featured ISTA committees presenting their work from over the past year; ISTA has 20 committees, made up of seed scientists from around the world including the UK. These committees cover sampling, seed purity, germination and vigour and work to improve seed testing practices, including new technologies such as image analysis with AI to develop seed testing aids in the future.
ISTA and the International Seed Federation also held a meeting on quality seed production for resilient and sustainable agriculture, chaired by Anna Hill of BBC Radio 4’s Farming Today. The topics covered were diversity in crops for future needs, new technologies and innovations in seed production and the importance of seed quality assurance for food and nutritional security.
Delegates, from agriculture ministries and seed companies around the world, were invited to tour Niab’s Park Farm site, on the outskirts of Cambridge, including visits to the OSTS, seed health testing, DUS spring barley plots, crop transformation facilities and Niab’s wheat pre-breeding programme in the glasshouses. A tree was planted after the tour by Mario Caccamo and ISTA’s president Keshavulu Kunosoth to commemorate the Centenary celebrations.
This article originally appeared in the Autumn 2024 edition of Niab’s Landmark magazine. Landmark features in-depth technical articles on all aspects of NIAB crop research, comment and advice. You can sign up for free and get Landmark delivered to your door or inbox: