First Announcement - 1st Meeting of the Phytosanitary Temperature Treatment Expert Group 17-20 August 2015 Nelspruit South Africa

This is the first announcement of the 1st Meeting of the Phytosanitary Temperature Treatment Expert Group (PTTEG), which will gather to discuss and act upon international phytosanitary treatment issues from 17-20 August, 2015, at Nelspruit, South Africa. Issues will be treated from research, regulatory, and commercial-application angles, thus, representatives from all three groups are encouraged to attend.

The PTTEG was formed at the Expert Consultation on Cold Treatments (ECCT) organized by the Secretariat of the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) and hosted by the national plant protection organization of Argentina in Buenos Aires, 2-6 December 2013. The ECCT was organised to address issues raised within the IPPC concerning cold phytosanitary treatments. The report of the ECCT can be accessed here.

The PTTEG was formed to continue the work started at the ECCT and was immediately expanded to include heat treatments. Terms of Reference and Rules of Procedures are in Appendix 5 of the ECCT report above. At the ECCT a work programme for the newly formed PTTEG was developed, priorities were assigned, and responsible parties were named. This work programme is available as Appendix 6 in the ECCT report. The web page of the PTTEG is: https://www.ippc.int/en/liason/organizations/phytosanitarytemperaturetreatmentsexpertgroup/

The 1st Meeting of the PTTEG will discuss the function and future of the group and report on work assigned at the ECCT, which deals with urgent issues concerning phytosanitary cold treatments, such as research guidelines and making cold treatments more broadly applicable. New business will include broadening the scope of the group and exploring new issues in research, regulation, and commercial application of phytosanitary treatments. Interested parties are urged to e-mail Joanne Wilson: [email protected] to be put on an e-mail list to receive further information as it becomes available. This will not be a typical scientific meeting format in that presentations are not necessarily made but efforts to form international strategies to solve phytosanitary problems are discussed and implemented.

See also: Recommended accommodation options in Nelspruit