Editorial

Abstract

Last year I was honoured to be elected by representatives of the member countries as EPPO's new Director-General. One of the responsibilities that comes with that job is Editor-in-Chief of the EPPO Bulletin. In practice most of the work of producing the Bulletin is undertaken by Madeleine McMullen, who is our Managing Editor, with others in the EPPO Secretariat helping to review papers and translate abstracts. That will continue to be the case. What I would like to do in my role as Editor-in-Chief, initially, is understand what you want from the Bulletin as readers and contributors, and ensure within the broad purposes of the Bulletin and available resources that we are meeting those needs as well as we can. The EPPO Bulletin is the official gazette of our organization, publishing Standards which we have formally adopted and reports of our activities, including proceedings of our workshops and conferences. In addition, we publish submitted papers on all aspects of plant protection, in particular those of special interest to the National Plant Protection Organizations of our member countries. The current issue contains papers on a representative range of topics from across EPPO's fields of interest. It includes a datasheet on the Invasive alien plant Baccharis halimifolia, and a revised version of the Standard PM 3 on ‘Testing growing medium and plants in growing medium’. These are followed by recommendations and conclusions from 2 EPPO Workshops held in 2013 on ‘Experiences with implementation of zonal evaluation of plant protection products’ and on ‘Management of Globodera rostochiensis and G. pallida’. The rest of the issue brings together a very wide range of authored articles on plant quarantine and plant protection products. A report on furniture as a pathway for pests is included along with results from a survey on pests in wood packaging material. Pest Risk Analysis is further developed in a quantitative interpretation of the entry section of the EPPO decision-support scheme. A paper from Syria provides information on parasitoids of scale pests and recommendations for the EPPO Positive List. A potential product for the control of postharvest green mould is evaluated and semi field trials for molluscicide efficacy are presented. Several first reports provide important updates on the geographical distribution of a range of pests and information on phytosanitary status of different crops have been provided by experts from across the EPPO region. Is this the right range of topics for the EPPO Bulletin to cover? Are the papers covering the topics in the right way and at the right length for you, as readers? If you have any views on the EPPO Bulletin do let me know via hq@eppo.int so we can take them into account as we start to prepare the content for future issues.