The ConferencesThe topic of viruses and other graft transmissible diseases dates back to a meeting in 1954 in Wädenswil, Switzerland (read more...). This meeting was entitled “Symposium on Fruit Tree Virus Diseases” and was held by a small group of international plant pathologists interested in the few virus diseases of deciduous fruit trees then known to occur in Europe and North America. The subsequent meetings became progressively wider in scope and increasingly concerned with viruses per se and virus diseases of fruit trees and small fruit crops worldwide. Furthermore, the scope included diseases caused by phytoplasmas and viroids when these organisms were identified as new and serious pathogens, many of them in fruit crops.
A scientific committee responsible for organizing the meetings was founded from the first meeting on. It consisted of the local organizers of subsequent meetings and other leading scientists in the field.
In 1973 the organizing committee accepted the invitation of the International Society for Horticultural Science to become one of the working groups set up by its Plant Protection Commission. This meeting was entitled “IXth International Symposium on Fruit Tree Virus Diseases”.
Proceedings of the first eight meetings were published as supplements of different phytopathological journals. Extended abstracts were published for the meetings in 1954 (available for download here) and in 1958. With one exception, the proceedings since the 9th meeting were published by ISHS in Acta Horticulturae.
Although research on virus diseases of strawberry was already a topic at the 1954 meeting, a separate symposium title on virus diseases of small fruit crops was established at the 1976 conference in Heidelberg, Germany. In 2006 the XXth International Symposium on Virus and Virus-Like Diseases of Temperate Fruit Crops and the XIth International Symposium on Small Fruit Virus Diseases were held in Antalya, Turkey. The chronological order of meeting places that have hosted the Symposia have been:
1954 Wädenswil Switzerland
1955 Wageningen The Netherlands
1956 East Malling United Kingdom
1960 Lyngby Denmark
1962 Bologna Italy
1965 Belgrad Yugoslavia
1967 Aschersleben Germany
1970 Bordeaux France
1973 East Malling United Kingdom
1976 Heidelberg Germany
1979 Budapest Hungary
1982 Vancouver Canada
1985 Bordeaux France
1988 Thessaloniki Greece
1991 Vienna Austria
1994 Rome Italy
1997 Bethesda USA
2000 Canterbury United Kingdom
2003 Valencia Spain
2006 Antalya Turkey
After discussions and approval by the current Scientific Committee it was decided to return to a meeting organization without the auspices of an international organization. Thus, the local organizers of the 2009 conference informed ISHS about this decision. At the same time it seemed appropriate to identify and establish a new title for the conference. The goal was to establish one name covering the Tree Fruit and Small Fruit Crops and to include viroid and phytoplasma diseases, that were referred to as virus-like diseases when no or little information was available on these pathogens in the past.
The Scientific Committee therefore decided to hold future meetings under the title “International Conference on Virus and other Graft Transmissible Diseases of Fruit Crops”
We are proud that the scientific community interested in the above fields of research will now meet again in Germany after 33 years and come together for the 21st time….
Invitation and Call for Papers
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