Meetings and presentations

The Second meeting of the Working Group (WG) on Berries was held on 18-19 June 2025 in Kaunas, Lithuania, organized in collaboration with the Lithuanian Research Centre for Agriculture and Forestry.

WG members from 14 countries presented their national activities. Monika Höfer, WG Chair, reported the results of the ‘Europe.Berries’ Activity, funded through the ECPGR Grant Scheme. This project enabled updating the documentation of Fragaria, Ribes, Rubus and Vaccinium collections across Europe. These data are meant to find their way into EURISCO through the respective National Inventory Focal Points and thus improve data quality and completeness of EURISCO. A draft of the crop-specific genebank standards for berries, developed through the project, was discussed during the meeting and eventually finalized for publication among the documents of the AEGIS Quality System.

The WG discussed possible joint actions for future cooperation and agreed to prioritize the preparation of descriptors and phenotyping protocols for Fragaria, Ribes, Rubus and Vaccinium, through the development of a proposal to be submitted to the next Call of the ECPGR Grant Scheme. Genotyping of the collections also remains an important target for the near future.