Above, checking on strawberry germplasm while in Dresden.

The first leg of the trip was to Dresden, Germany to work with Dr. Monika Hoefer at the Julius Kuhn-Institut, Bundesforschungsinstitut fur Kulturpflanzen, Institut fur Zuchtungsforschung an Gartenbaulichen Kulturen und Obst in Dresden Pillniz.  We are developing a research plan for testing cryopreservation techniques on strawberry germplasm.  In this visit I was able to see her facilities, see how her technicians were working with the plants and we established what experiments and which germplasm would be used.   The second leg was to present an invited lecture at the First ISHS symposium on the Cryopreservation of Horticultural Species in Leuven, Belgium.  This was a 3 1/2 day meeting with 36 platform talks and about 75 poster presentations.  My talk, “Choosing and Applying Cryopreservation Protocols to New Species or Tissues” was very well received with many questions after the talk and during the remainder of the meeting. I also discussed possible collaborative research with several other participants.