Articles
INTRODUCTION. THE ORGANISATION, AIMS & ACTIVITIES OF THE EEC EXPERT GROUP ON FRUIT
This, in turn, is one of ten such committees operated by the Standing Committee for Agricultural Research within the Directorate General for Agriculture (DG VI) in the EEC. The Programme Committee has been operating since 1979 and its present programme is due to end in 1983. The objectives of the Programme Committee are i) to further the genetic improvement of resistance to pests and diseases in crop plants and ii) to encourage the use of gene banks for this purpose.
The Programme Committee decided that to achieve better co-ordination of gene bank activity, improved documentation would be necessary for many of the important crops.
Consequently much of the work of the twelve Expert Groups established by this Committee has been concerned with the production of improved descriptor lists in various crops such as cereals, herbage legumes, grasses and potatoes.
A special group for strawberries had essentially completed such work before the Expert Group on Fruit was established in December 1980.
The Group held its first meeting in Brussels in December 1980 under the Chairmanship of G. Jenkins (UK) and comprised Dr.
Christensen (Denmark), Professor Fiorino (Italy), Dr.
Huet (France) – later replaced by Dr.
Lelezec, Dr.
O’Kennedy (Ireland), Dr.
Populer (Belgium), Dr.
Watkins (UK) and Dr.
Wertheim (Netherlands). Dr.
H. Schmidt (FGR) joined the Group later.
Subsequent meetings were held in Florence in May 1981 and at Brussels/Gembloux in October 1981.
The Group recognised that existing work on the genetic conservation of fruit crops was characterised by the wide range of species handled and the dispersed and rather fragmentary nature of these activities.
Consequently, it was decided that a European Gene Bank for each crop would be established which would constitute a central repository of