12th Board Meeting of GlobalHort

5-7 February 2013. Brussels, Belgium.


The 12th Meeting of the GlobalHort Board of Directors. GlobalHort is at a crossroads with respect to both management and leadership. Remi Kahane’s term as Executive Secretary finishes at the end of February 2013 and the Board Chair, Norman Looney, representing ISHS, will also be stepping down in 2013. A new Executive Secretary was selected.

The Secretariat will continue to be located in Rome and hosted at FAO such as the secretariat of the Global Forum for Agricultural Research (GFAR). Cooperation with CIRAD will continue, likely within the framework of the existing MoU between FAO and CIRAD but with no direct funding of GlobalHort anymore.

Left/front: Jerry Miner
Right/front: Jozef Van Assche & Antonio Monteiro
in front of the impressive collection of the
Acta Horticulturae magazine

Other topics given special attention at this Board meeting included an update on the efforts to gain GlobalHort Secretariat support from the Belgium Directorate General for Development Cooperation;       Coripha [Co-ordinated Innovation Platforms on Horticulture for ACP] – a proposal submitted to S&T Programme II call in February 2013.

A visit was organised on 07/02/2013 to the University of Leuven (Laboratory of Tropical Plants and Banana Research Laboratory) and the + ISHS [International Society for Horticultural Science] Secretariat.

PAEPARD was invited as an observer to this meeting.