'Capacity Building for Plant Quarantine Officers for the Rapid Identification of Quarantine Pests'

#COP14 #Egypt #Sri_Lanka #Biodiversity #Quarantine_Pests #NSF

Dr. Samy Zalat, chairman of the Nature and Science Foundation, was invited to attend a training entitled "Capacity building for plant quarantine officers for the rapid identification of quarantine/invasive pests in imported consignments" as a resource person. The National Plant Quarantine Service of the Department of Agriculture conducted a training program on rapid identification of quarantine/invasive pests in imported consignments using DNA bar-coding techniques. The training program was held from the 10th to 31st August 2018 in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

It was an exemplary event of the Global Taxonomy Initiative standard DNA technology training (GTI-DNA-tech) to address the taxonomic impediment and mainstreaming biodiversity for Parties to the Convention to achieve Aichi Biodiversity Targets and Sustainable Development Goals. As a resource person, prof. Zalat collected information and analyzed the GTI-DNA-tech in order to report its efficacy to the series of events at the occasion of the 14th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention (COP14) to help achieve Aichi Biodiversity Targets.