ISHS Acta Horticulturae 95: II International Symposium on Small Fruit Virus Diseases
OPENING ADDRESS |
| Authors: | I. Kovács, J. Váncsa, A.F. Murant |
| Abstract:
Ladies and Gentlemen, I should like to greet you in the name of the Organizing Committee of both Symposia on the occasion that today we begin the XIth International Symposium on Fruit Tree Virus Diseases and the IInd International Symposium on Small Fruit Virus Diseases. I am glad to welcome among us Mr. Jen* Váncsa, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Food Dr. Mathys, Director-General of the EPPO: Dr. Kristensen, President of the ISHS Plant Protection Commission Dr. Posnette, President of the International Committee for Cooperation on Fruit Tree Virus Research Dr. Murant, President of the ISHS Working Group on Small Fruit Virus Diseases; Dr. Bálint Nagy, Head Of the Plant Protection and Agro-chemistry Department, Ministry of Agriculture and Food; and all those who came to participate in this work. The Hungarian Plant Protection Service is very much honoured that this important event takes place in our institute, in the Plant Protection Centre. Our institute was established in 1976 by a Goverment decision, in order to fulfil very effectively the plant protection and soil management activity. The task of our insitute is to manage the plant protection and agrochemical activity, to develop technologies in both fields, to promote use of modern equipments and to regulate the products in use. Activity of the Hungarian plant protection goes back for at least 25 years. I do hope we will find time to show you our results. In the institute and in the national service of the so called special laboratories particular attention is paid to the section dealing with fruit tree virus diseases, as well as to the Laboratory of Plant Virology and the Indexing site. These two are under the supervision of our Centre. Though the staff of this special section is not numerous it achieved important results in the field of the production of virus-free propagating material and in the diagnostics of virus diseases because we have very good collaboration with the research institutes and with other state organizations. Our main aim is to establish in the very. near future virus-free plantations and at the same time a continuous increase of the yields. After this very brief summary of our basic duty, you may understand that we are expecting much help from successful work of the Symposia. So let me welcome you again in Budapest, in the capital of our country. As far as we are concerned in the arrangement of the Symposia our aim was to ensure the best possible condition for your work, and we do hope that you will have a good time with us. When drawing up the programmes of the meeting and excursions we should have liked to give you opportunity to get acquainted with the hospitality of the Hungarians and with some parts of Hungary. We wish you, experts of 24 nations, fruitful work and new scientific results and successes in your field. With these thoughts I open the XIth International Symposium on Fruit Tree Virus Diseases and the IInd International Symposium on Small Fruit Virus Diseases and I call upon Mr.
Váncsa, Deputy Minister, to address the Symposia. I have the honour to greet you on behalf of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food of the Hungarian People's Republic on the occasion of opening the XIth International Symposium on Fruit Tree Virus Diseases, and the IInd International Symposium on Small Fruit Virus Diseases. It is an honour for us that these important international symposia take place in Hungary upon the request of the International Committee for Cooperation on Fruit Tree Virus Research and the Working Group on Small Fruit Virus Diseases of the International Society of Horticultural Sciences. I think, that besides the scientific work on the panels and in the sessions, you will also have the opportunity, to see some practical aspects of our agriculture, namely the state of fruitgrowing, the work on production of virus-free propagating material and the results already achieved. Allow me to offer a brief survey of the situation of agriculture in Hungary and the tasks of technical development. In recent years the problem of food production has become the centre of public interest all over the world. To supply food for the people of the world requires great efforts and responsibilities for the people working in agriculture. The increased and increasing demand for food, as well as the realisation of our potential, urged us to improve food production. The peculiar feature of the development of our economy is that agriculture serves as an important counterpart of imported raw materials and other products. For more than two decades our agrarian and cooperative policy successfully served the socialist development of our society. During this period great social and economic changes took place in agriculture. The socialist agriculture and the development of agrarian conditions significantly contributed to the improvment of the financial position and the enhancement of knowledge and raising the living standard in Hungary. The natural enviroment in our country allows the economical production practically all cultivated plants with the exeption of a few seasoning plants and the tropical fruits. Nearly 75 % of the country can be cultivated or utilised agriculturally. It is our national treasure and we shall rely on it. Radical changes have taken place in our food production in the last 10 years: Agricultural production became industrialised, the production has been integrated, the proportion of live labour decreased, the effectiveness of production increased and the socialist large-scale agricultural production stabilized. Extensive reserves economic development are becoming exhausted thus they are gradually being replaced by the development of intensive production based on high level professional skill. Now, I would like to demonstrate our results with some figures. First of all a few words about the acceleration of the rate of agricultural production:
It has also been possible to increase the food industrial production by more than 5 % per year. The participation of the food industry in the national income varies between 16–19 %, according to its volume. The export of agricultural and food industrial products increased by more than five times during the last 15 years. In recent years the agricultural production was greatly intensified. Besides the production, the cultivated areas were also significantly concentrated. In Hungary there are 124 state farms and 1.436 agricultural cooperative farms. The average size of the state farms is above 8.000 hectares and that of the cooperative farms around 4.200 hectares. Additionally the household and auxiliary farms are of great importance. Big successes were gained in cereal production - the yield of wheat is above 42 metric centner pro hectare and that of corn is 51–52 metric center pro hectare. In our economy horticultural production plays a significant part - first of all the vegetable and fruit growing, but the vine production is also important, especially on the international market. Our poultry production is considerable in the international trade also. The technical level of the agricultural production is satisfactory, and we endeavour to apply not only the results of other socialist countries but also that of the Western-European countries, having developed an agricultural machinery industry. It makes possible the harvesting of more than 1.5 million hectares cereal within 10–12 days. One of the main tasks of the Hungarian food production is to satisfy entirely the requirements of the country. Apart from this - as you know - we also export food in significant quantities. In addition to our traditional international partners the number of other countries we trade with is increasing, and thus above our own economic interests we contribute - even if modesty - to satisfying the food requirements of the world. The production of each fourth - fifth hectare goes to the international market. Our aim is to satisfy the qualitative requirements of both the domestic and foreign markets. As a consequence of the further concentration and specialisation of the agricultural production, the plant protection and soil conservation play important rolls in the agricultural processes. We can say, without being self-satisfied that we have an internationally known, well organized and established system of plant protection and agrochemistry. We have 3500 highly specialised engineers of plant protection, 2700 skilled and semi-skilled plant protection workers, and 12000 plant protection machines to help our work. In the last few decades among the plant pathological problems the virus diseases have been emphasized; threfore to have virus-free propagating material is considered by the developed fruit- and grapevine growing states to be one of the important factors to increase the efficiancy of plantations. The tasks for producing virus-free fruit tree and other propagating material were determined by the 1977 program of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food on the basis of the earlier scientific and practical experiences, and its realisation in due time is regarded as an outstanding duty. It is expected of this conference
Honoured Symposium, Ladies and Gentlemen, at the end I wish you success in your work in these symposia which will widen our scientific and practical knowledge in the field of production of virus-free fruit tree and small fruit propagating materials, and will contribute to further strengthening our international relations. Once again I welcome all of you and we are hoping our foreign guest will enjoy the Hungarian hospitality.
I wish you success in your work at the Symposia. As Chairman of the ISHS Working Group on Small Fruit Virus Diseases it gives me great pleasure to welcome participants to our IInd International Symposium. At the same time I wish to express the thanks of the group to the Plant Protection and Agrochemistry Centre of the Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture for graciously allowing us to meet here and for making all the arrangements for the Symposium. We value the opportunity not only to meet with our colleagues from all parts of the world but also to see something of the propagation and culture of small fruits in Hungary. No doubt too we will see some of the problems, especially the virus problems, that confront growers in Hungary as they confront growers in all parts of the world. It is our belief that by mutual discussion of these problems and by sharing our knowledge about them we can come to a fuller understanding of the way the viruses spread and cause disease and of the ways in which their effects can be minimised or, we may hope, avoided altogether. Some of us work exclusively with viruses of small fruits but others, I suspect the majority, devote much time also to studying virus diseases of tree fruits and other kinds of crop. This arises at least in part because many of the viruses we study have wide host ranges and cause disease in more than one kind of crop. We therefore arranged our first meeting at Heidelberg to take place on the day preceding the Symposium on Fruit Tree Virus Diseases to enable those workers who wished to do so to attend both meetings at relatively small extra cost. This arrangement was considered by the members of the group to be highly successful and we have therefore, with the kind agreement of the Fruit Tree Virus Group, repeated it here in Budapest. This time however the meetings are overlapping rather than consecutive but our hosts have sought, in their programme arrangements, to minimise conflict of interest. Having glanced briefly through the programme I am sure we will have an interesting and profitable time and a chance to renew old acquaintances and to make many new ones. I wish to conclude these few short words of introduction by wishing you all a fruitful exchange of ideas in the coming days and by expressing the hope that our discussions and excursions will serve, to increase still further our understanding of the causes and prevention of virus diseases in small fruits. | |
