17 June 2019

From 11th to 13th June 2019, the G2P-SOL consortium came together for its 3rd Progress Meeting in Plovdiv, the second largest city in Bulgaria and the European Capital of Culture 2019. The meeting was hosted by the local G2P-SOL partner Ivanka Tringovska and her team from the Maritsa Vegetable Crops Research Institute (MVCRI).
 
The coordinator, Giovanni Giuliano, opened the meeting and gave a brief summary of the recently held review meeting in Brussels and emphasized that the project made good progress since it started. The first meeting day continued with presentations by the work package leaders who described the progress since last year’s Project Meeting held in Israel. During break-out sessions the partners discussed crop specific issues and planned the phenotyping trials to be implemented in 2019 and 2020.
On day two of the meeting, the consortium focused on aspects related to communication and dissemination. Part of the meeting was also dedicated to a session on “How to make expected project results sustainable” followed by a discussion on the collaboration with other stakeholders both from the public and private sector.   
The meeting was concluded with a technical visit to the Maritsa Institute and their experimental fields outside of Plovdiv. The partners got the opportunity to see the G2P-SOL tomato core collection growing on open fields and to visit the greenhouse facilities.
 
Overall, the meeting was a great success. All participants used the opportunity to have intense discussions, strengthen the collaborations in the project and showcase that G2P-SOL is making good progress towards linking genetic resources, genomes and phenotypes of tomato, pepper, eggplant and potato.