In September 24-27 the International Potato Center (CIP) is organizing an event “Developing a Potato Seed Certification System”, within the project “Enhancing Rural Livelihoods in Georgia: Introducing Integrated Seed Health Approaches to Local Potato Seed Systems”, supported by Austrian Development Agency. The workshop will be organized in Tbilisi (24-25 September, Hotel Biltmor) and Kazbegi (26-27 September, Hotel Rooms and fields in villages Sno).
This four-day workshop will support to enable Georgian partners in their effort to develop a seed certification plan for Georgia. Participants will review and discuss the previous system that existed in Georgia during the Soviet era, as well as current systems in other countries, with particular emphasis only the recommendations by UNECE. During the event an additional concepts will also be reviewed that can help make the seed system plan more successful, such as concepts of optimizing thresholds as described by Choudhury et al (2017), alternative forms of quality control, such as Quality Declared Seed (QDS), and the appropriateness of mandatory certification.
As a output of the workshop, participants will develop a roadmap for moving forward with seed certification of potato, including the steps to take, who will take the steps and the development of a timeline.