On 24 and 25 May 2022, a meeting dedicated to the EVA Lettuce (European Evaluation Network) project of the ECPGR (European Cooperative Program for Plant Genetic Resources) group was held in Salsomaggiore Terme (PR).
The EVA Lettuce group is made up of professionals from different European countries and finally got the chance to meet to discuss the progress of the project dedicated to the evaluation of lettuce accessions found in the main European germplasm banks.
The collaboration between public institutes, European seed
companies (Limagrain, ISI Sementi, Gautier, Sativa Rheinau, and Zollinger), and germplasm banks began in 2019 with funding from the German government and continued its path remotely during the pandemic. The EVA Lettuce project has carried out more than 11 experimental trials in Europe, in which more than 200 lettuce accessions have been evaluated by traits of agronomic interest for the food chain.
In addition, a panel of more than 80 thousand molecular markers was developed for the first time using single primer enrichment technology (SPET) in collaboration with Italian genotyping experts. The data generated were processed through bioinformatics analysis and will serve as the basis for the second phase of the EVA Lettuce project.
ISI Sementi supervised the two-day event, which concluded with a visit to the company's headquarters in Fidenza. In addition to Italy, the nationalities who attended included representatives from the Netherlands, Greece, Bulgaria, Austria, France, and Switzerland.