Read more - International Society for Horticultural Science

Dr. Georg J. Noga, ISHS Treasurer.

Thanks to a growing membership, hundreds of successful Symposia, a high production rate of impressive publications, and excellent financial management with disciplined spending, ISHS has finally reached its long-term goal of having the equivalent of one year?s turnover in reserves, thus meeting the ISHS Council request and Belgian legal requirements. What a wonderful and comfortable situation for our Society! But it took a long time to meet this goal, and it was the result of continuous efforts and sound financial management whereby past treasurers, ISHS Board and Council have made wise decisions of setting some money aside each year instead of spending it. In order to maintain this healthy, financially prudent situation in the future, the Society, the Treasurer and the Internal Auditors are obliged to continue to control spending. They must ensure that the Society pays only for needed items while avoiding impulse driven expenditures with limited likelihood of beneficial returns.

With money on hand, temptations are growing for the Society to invest at least some of the reserves in new activities. This consideration is quite legitimate. But what priorities must ISHS use in deciding where to make such new expenditure? The Treasurer as well as the other Board members received requests from individuals of our Society to allocate some of this reserve money on fellowships and awards dedicated to outstanding young scientists.

The idea, if attractive at first, may be very difficult to implement by our Society. For instance, how many grants should be made available, at what amount, to whom and for how long? Should there be a regional quota, e.g. members from less developed countries preferred? What would be the specific eligibility requirements? What would the nomination and selection processes involve? Who would make the interim and final decisions? Should we install additional committees to evaluate applications? Many questions are arising from the original simple request; whatever, such a system would be quite a challenge with the potential for additional work and resources.

However, the main question is: Will we be offering a service that other institutions and funding agencies are better prepared and qualified to offer? So far, it has not been part of the ISHS mandate to provide grants or fellowships to researchers. I must admit that there are ? at least from the financial perspective ? good reasons not to do so. There are many other prestigious institutions who?s primary objectives and task are to provide funding. It might actually be more productive for ISHS to seek out opportunities for cooperation with such institutions instead of adding another topic of responsibility and financial engagement to our long list of already existing ISHS duties and services. As far as research grants are concerned, in most countries there are funding institutions providing support to members of our horticultural discipline. Would there be opportunities for cooperation of mutual benefit with such institutions? In other words, what could we offer as a prosperous, highly visible and acknowledged International Society to make collaboration mutually attractive?

I am very fortunate to have been selected as host for Humboldtians. Over the years I have accommodated several young postdocs from different countries and continents as researchers in my lab at Bonn University. In doing so I have made good friendships with the research fellows, and I also established a trusting cooperation with the and its highly respected officials. AvH is a prestigious institution representing one of the most acknowledged foundations worldwide providing postdoctoral research fellowships and research awards for highly qualified scientists from all disciplines and all countries (www.humboldt-foundation.de). The sole selection criterion is academic excellence. There are no quotas for countries or subjects. At present the Humboldt Network of Knowledge Elite comprises 24,000 scientists and scholars from all disciplines in more than 130 countries around the world, among them 44 Nobel Prize winners. Within the last 5 years AvH has awarded close to 3000 postdoc fellowships, of which 65% were granted to applicants of Natural Sciences. A high percentage of the applicants are from Europe (37%) and Asia (36%), a significant proportion are from North America (14%), but from Africa, Latin America and New Zealand there are only 6%, 4% and 2% of the candidates, respectively.

The Humboldt Foundation welcomes excellent applications from all countries equally. Like any other international granting institution the Humboldt Foundation has a great interest in making its programs visible worldwide and selecting the top postdocs. This objective could become the basis for a close cooperation with ISHS. But what kind of service could ISHS offer that AvH or other granting institutions would benefit from? Our Society could help to make the AvH funding programs visible worldwide. ISHS is an excellent, extremely strong organization to do this with its international network of Working Groups, Sections and Commissions. We are in the fantastic situation now to sanction and publish about 50 International Symposia per year! This is amazing! In other words, every week on average ISHS organizes an International Symposium somewhere in the world! Our ISHS website records more than 28,500 page views per day! We can all be very proud! These are incredible achievements, and we really should take advantage of this opportunity to spread the attractive message for institutional cooperation of mutual benefit!
Therefore, with the agreement and mandate of our Board, the Treasurer and the Executive Director, Jozef Van Assche, made an initial visit to explore the opportunity and willingness for cooperation with Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. This first meeting was held on December 3, 2010, in Bonn. The outcome was very encouraging, and it opened up new possibilities for supporting young researchers in their professional career by getting access to funding programs that will benefit the successful individuals, ISHS and cooperating Institutions.
For example, ISHS:

• could assist in spreading material on AvH ?Georg Forster Research Fellowship Program? to ISHS members;
• will provide information on its website outlining central activities of AvH and will establish a link to the AvH website
• to explain the procedure for AvH applications
• to act as a go between for applicants and groups of excellence to host AvH awardees and
• to facilitate interdisciplinary involvement in projects for the benefit of horticulture(ists);
• support AvH in gaining visibility at the Regional ISHS Congresses in Africa, South-East Asia and Latin America in the year 2012 and this way also inform ISHS members on funding opportunities;
• enlarge the ISHS Award and Fellowship Portfolio with fellowships and awards provided by AvH.

This would be a major step forward: Adding value to our ISHS membership by building bridges. This strategy would be completely in line with one of our central missions, to facilitate global networking. If our expectations regarding ISHS ? AvH cooperation come to fruition, and, I have no doubt on that they will, this could serve as a model for other liaisons that may follow where ISHS is highly visible in international arenas. Success will allow plant sciences in general and horticultural science in particular to have a significant impact on the health and wellbeing of human-kind, at the same time adding value for our members by exploiting rewarding opportunities with other prestigious institutions.

Source: http://www.ishs.org/news/?p=1771

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