 I'm here to present to you the National Celebratory Network from Glossomland, so what we call Nasoland. And now we're, so this is the strategy for Glossomland to downscale, but also you will see the way to upscale our activities as well. As Nokmane said already, the network is increasing, almost every day we're receiving more registration to the network, to the Glossomland network, I'm really happy about that, but of course our aim is to have all laboratories operating in solar analysis in the world, registering in the network. So now we are close to the 500 laboratories and here the two networks, which are here present, so the Africa and the Glossomland represent the two biggest networks because they are more than 100 lab each in their members. So we're pretty happy. So the problems now, the initial care rise, this issue is how we can reach all laboratories at local scale. So as you know Glossomland is organized under different regional networks that are the Resoland, as Avrilab and Resoland are examples. So we divided the world into different, currently we have six different networks, regional networks, actually seven because we are now establishing also the North American Resoland, but we want to move forward. We want to reach the national scale. We want to reach every single laboratory operating in the country. So to do that we have to move forward and reach another larger step of downscaling this to establish national networks. To do that, here in this slide I try to represent what is the geometry of Glossomland. Let's go a little in this way. So Glossomland is trying to downscale its activities, so to reach all laboratories registering and implement better Glossomland activities at a really local scale and develop policies that can address the problem and the challenges of each laboratory operating in each country. But to do that we need an upscaling process from the laboratories. We want laboratories and the Resoland to report the challenges and all the problems from the regions and from the countries to the Glossomland. So it's like a circle, you see. We put down our policies and we want to have some feedback from bottom up approach, so from each country, from each lab actually, some mid-proposal report challenges and every type of issues in order to let, in order to allow us to develop the best policies to address such problems, but at the same time we need the horizontal movement. So we need a connection among laboratories at the same scale, so among the regional networks and especially within the same country or neighborhood countries. We need laboratories to share their experience, to organize proficiency testing by themselves to improve their quality in analysis, and we want them to communicate, we want them to share experience and problems in order to find solutions to the same problems. So basically the aim is to solve, as I wrote here, problem problems acting globally and that we're running, so solve local problems acting globally. So we want to establish these national networks, so why we want to do it? Because this can improve the efficacy of gross on activities and we can then develop ad hoc problems, programs in order to address the challenges of laboratories that really look at local scale. And this will allow us also to reach an higher audience, so a larger number of labs because more laboratories will know about our programs and they will be involved in registering in the network. So in that stage we want to encourage the formation of the establishment of national networks and support their creation, or even help countries which already have their national network to enlarge and empower such networks. To do that we wrote the national networks terms of reference that is a document that we prepare and that will present to your attention in order to be endorsed in the next gross on meeting that we take in November 2020 and in these terms of reference is written all the commitments, all the points of the national networks and this regards the large amount of the network by spreading the voice and encourage more laboratories to take part in that, play a role in implementing gross on activities and advertise gross on activities to all laboratories operating in the country and other way around, advertise gross on about activities organized at local level. In the same time it's very important that the national networks will organize national trainings and meetings as we're doing now for the regional network. We would like each country to establish a network in which they will be free to organize their trainings, their meetings on issues and topics that are mostly related to the two problems that are so in each country because every country has got different issues and topics and we want is better if each country or group of countries talks about the main issues that they have and organized training and meetings of course is a way to transmit the knowledge that some countries maybe not unfortunately not all laboratories operating in the country can take part in gross on and resonant meetings so organizing national networks meeting will allow all laboratories operating in the country to get knowledge about what gross on and resonant are doing because other labs can tell them and moreover again laboratories in this kind of meeting they can discuss about the main challenges and find solutions together and explore financial resources and another resources to address such problems. In the terms of reference is written that national networks has to improve their quality by organizing an interlaboratory complex on exercise as Kristen said they are really not just interesting but essential to improve the quality of performance from the labs. So we really encourage national networks to organize PTs and keep communication active. This is a key issue to have success in this issue so we want a clear communication between the national networks the Resolan chair by chair and the Glossom chair by chair and coordinators. And of course each national networks will have a country profile now I'll show you how it will look like on the web page there will be a profile for each country and that will be like a shop window. So we want all national networks to get us known as soon as they organize a training meeting on any type of activities so we can advertise it on the web page. If PTs is preparing an activity on that region or on certain topic you will like national networks to be aware of it and advertise among its members. In this scenario a key role is played by the national reference laboratories. As you know national reference laboratories are laboratories nominated by the national focal point at the global partnership and there is one national reference by country in the 99% of the cases sometimes there too. But this national reference laboratory has to take leadership in the establishment of the network or in the implementing activities if the network already exists. So we want national reference labs to take leadership in implementing the network and activities organized by the network and by Glossom to be implemented within the network. A national reference laboratory has to both scale down and scale up the activities in order to involve all laboratories to be part of operating in the country, to be part of Glossomland and the Russell and Resoland and we want the national reference laboratories to report to the Resoland chair and vice chair and to Glossom and vice chair and coordinators about the challenges of the network. They are the ring in the chain to let us know about the issues of the network and the other way around to let the national networks members to get noted, to know about the Glossom activities and all this is reported, still already reported in the terms of reference for the laboratories in Glossomland which is on the website and all now what I told you is already reported there so this is already something that the national reference laboratories should take a look at. They should be active on this on this topic but don't forget even if you are not in national reference laboratory you have still to play a role. Everybody counts in Glossomland and all members should play a role in this. Every single lab can make the difference. Every single lab can advertise another lab to be part of the network, both the national and national network and the global network and we all should go in the same direction. We have to go in the same direction together. Within the national networks a work plan has to be established and this work plan has to be followed by all laboratories in the network and all should agree on this otherwise the network just won't work. As we are doing in these resolute meetings, we are agreeing on the agenda, on the SOPs to harmonize, on the topics and we are working together on that. The same will happen in the national scale. You all have to agree and propose activities at the national scale to implement them and you have to help and support each other. So as Cristian always said, we don't have to have 10 top laboratories within the network, we want to have all laboratories at a good level or even the good laboratories has to help the lower quality level for laboratories anywhere around. So you have to support each other to find a common solution to the common problems. Now I will talk a little bit about which are the main issues. After my presentation will be a little discussion among different examples from Europe and Africa. So some countries represent the national networks which are at a different stage of development, some really established, some are under the establishment and some still established. But here I summarize some of the main issues which are common that will also be presented to you by other countries. So in many cases there is an issue, should we include all laboratories in the network or should we make like a level of quality of them, there is a communication that represents another problem because some countries are very, very wide and they cannot reach all laboratories operating in the country, there is a communication problem or on the other hand countries are too small. So maybe there are very few laboratories operating in the country and they cannot be grouped together in the network, maybe there are just two or three laboratories, so in that case it's better to group different countries together. Then of course there is COVID-19, as you can see we are not in reality but virtually and this also play a role on the establishment of the Netherlands because many countries were organizing the kick-off meeting in 2020 at the post point. And again financial resources is always a matter, is always an issue and many countries are activities are badly affected by the scarcity of financial resources and again the agreement of priorities and on the work plan is an issue because sometimes in the kick-off meeting or in the annual meeting they don't, laboratories don't agree on the same purposes and then after a few months, after a few years the work plan is lost, they don't know where to go, they don't know what to do and the workload increases and there are not enough resources both financial and human resources to face the work plan. And so as I told you we are establishing also a database on the Glossner website, rich country, so if you will go on Glossner website on the left menu there is a national solar border networks. If you click there there's already this this on page for now so far we are doing our establishment of the networks. In a month or so in November we will launch the web page which will be active and will present a country profile for all countries so there will be a drop-down menu as you're on the right. You just click on the on the country and information of the national networks on the national network for each country will appear. Now I report you the example from Philippines that we are currently building their country profile, we are still finalizing it, but it's a good example you see the how you can see here how the the national network profile will look like. So we know we will have information on the name of the network, on the members and the the brief story about the network, I mean activities and the lights of the network and then the main challenges of the network and of the laboratories operating in the registering the network, then some information on the national reference laboratory of the country which again should take the leadership of the nasoland and then below the information of all the members of the network they will release it below with their information type of analysis they perform in type of laboratory so if for instance it's a university laboratory, if it's a works in the private sector, it's a public and so on, in order to be aware of which laboratories operating in which country in order to create networks even within among different countries. So I wish to move forward we would like to we want you actually to establish your own national networks or if it's already established we want you to enlarge it to advertise your activities in order to have more laboratories registered beneath and we're also publishing like cookbooks on some guidelines on how to establish your national network and we ask you to review the terms of reference that will be discussed during the next dosename meeting and implement it in case you have more some more inputs on it and we want you to help us in keeping your country profile updated so as soon as you recognize an activity a training or some labs registered we want you to let us know so we can publish under country profile and let everybody know about it. So now we are three cases if your national network is already established please make sure that all possible laboratories operating in the countries are registered we want you to be spread among your countries as much as possible so please make sure to have as many laboratories as possible registered in your national network and make sure to have an adequate work plan to implement the activities both at local that also activities which come from the Resolan and Rosalyn and keep always looking for financial resources to support your network because financial resources are never enough whereas if your national networks is under establishment please make sure that all obstacles to the establishment of the network have been addressed even those that you think you didn't foresee those you didn't count please make sure that all obstacles has been addressed organize the first meeting the kickoff meeting in person of virtually if you are available please develop a work plan that is uh with another another way to work plan to foresee the the real workload in order to mobilize the the right amount of financial resources and human resources and again look for financial resources because they are never enough while if your if your national network is not yet established please identify the the problems which are between you and the goal of the establishment of the network find all the obstacles try to find a solution on that not alone as a as a single lab discuss among the laboratory operating in this in the same country discuss about these problems about these obstacles and try to find a common solution to establish the network think about this solution take into account the national focal point and go about the partnership ask about the ask support to your in national reference lab but do not forget that you are not alone in case of need you can ask support support to the your original soil laboratory network chair vice chair as well as to the glosman chair and vice chair and the glosman coordinator we are really want to every country to have the national soil laboratory network which works and we are more than happy to support you but since the national network will work just if each laboratory within the network will play a role we would like you to solve your problems because you know the the problems because they are at scale but i think you can also deal with the solution because you live every day life within your within your network within your country and you can address your problems in a better way but we can give you all the support that you need so good luck with the establishment of your network and and thank you for your attention. Ilypo maybe just a clarification the the web pages of the national soil laboratory networks these are really like your pages so we are making these efforts to create them in order for you to save budget and use them these pages are yours so that's why it's important that you help us to develop the content keep it updated it would be very very useful in terms of financial resources mobilization for you and for us to approach donors for projects many times we receive emails of institutions organizations implementing projects and asking us what is a good laboratory to work with in these countries or what laboratory in this country do this type of analysis so this would also help you connecting to other projects initiatives either ongoing or that will start no so when they write concept notes you can be involved in a project so these pages are really for you this was my just just one clarification yeah sure very important really you should take advantage of these resources everybody is like really as I told you it's like a window shop like everybody will see it and will this is why we also put in the in your country profile the details of all laboratories operating in the country because donors or other institutions would like to contact you directly so if they're not if it's clear we don't have any any question we can move forward to the agenda and I will give the floor to the first country which we present their national networks that is Mozambique which yes Ricardo Maria are you there hello yeah Ricardo yes he is Mr. Lindo okay so I will show you I will explain the presentation for you so here is example of Mozambique of their national networks which really focusing also on harmonization of methods so I think it would be very interesting so do you see the presentation on the screen okay yeah please go ahead and tell me when you want me to change the slide okay so the standardization of the salt testing methods in Mozambique yeah EIM is the biggest of here in Mozambique so organize a meeting with the same the different laboratory so during this meeting EIM get the two points the some of them is a review of salt testing the suit that begin use it by different salt testing laboratories these laboratories a government on it and review the salt date storage and salt achieve this we talk about the salt laboratory information system and then during the this meeting we had during this meeting we we got some some issues to discuss some of them is salt testing methods and data interpretation salt testing capabilities of existing laboratories we talk here about human capital and equipment data quality data management and new laboratories they want support to their needs and then we got some training with teacher of brazilian basic principle of classification and management so okay so in Mozambique we have uh different laboratories so this is a different laboratory use different methods uh for example for phosphor we got uh also and bray and milky these these three uh methods have uh different results and for tester we use pipeta and idrometer uh organ carbon determination we have uh loss ignition and what could be to say that this loss in loss on ignition uh the big problem here is the temperature some some laboratory the temperature is around 800 and 8150 so it's give the different results to ph and uh electric conductivity the big problem is shaking of the time and uh pasta the pasta pasta's history uh uh to pursue the for establishing of the national laboratory network the first thing is mapping existing uh laboratory testing facilities uh take all the mapping of salt laboratory standardizing the salt testing methods with the national salt laboratory network building the database of stakeholder and existing facilitated coven the presidential meeting for discussing road map of the network of salt testing laboratories and develop the concept not for capability building of central salt testing laboratory and we get in during the uh we got some expected for the number of laboratories network uh for government we got six uh these six some of education and some is research agriculture and we got private but we hope that we can have 10 or or more but for playing there is no resource for supporting the initiative unfortunately jika was uh assistant support the initiative and come to end the challenge uh we have here a lot of challenge the big challenge the first challenge is human capital human capital we talk here because here in our laboratory the many staff they don't have high level like master and p.a.d. here we get a bachelor's degree the other other point is financial resource and here in our laboratory got some equipment but this equipment right now is not okay for example for near we have problem for software and nitrogen and p.f. we got some problem of to buy some material and then we have problem too we got some problem of certification of ISO and keep moment of stock out why we say this this last point because uh many network uh here in our country uh when the donor ends the the the program uh this network don't go ahead just uh end to uh so we have the the way forward first the first first way is mapping existing soul and capacity standardizing testing procedure build the the internal and external quality control uh immigration to environmental cost and more accurate testing procedure uh develop more reboot so reboot so to testing information this point is because uh here we got some problem of uh database so for example like when it goes the to take a sample in the some way in the some place we need to to organize the code the geography coordinate the analyze physical and chemical to put in the in the database well would organize it to put to have to facilitate the politicize to to in is to encourage the private sector and then we got some problem we get this way and upgrades our testing and the equipment we have via microwave and the dry combustion and heavy human capital development dole and job training study tools and high education and say that thanks for your attention philippo i cannot hear you i don't know if others can yes thank you very much for this example and for working as this uh your national network and your main issue that is related to the harmonization of methods and unit of measurement uh don't need for some question from the chat um there is also a hands up one from turkey uh can you want to take the floor you have a question can yeah can everybody hear me yeah please go ahead okay so yeah my my concern is um to your presentation actually yes um let me introduce myself just a few words first so since a great things from soil and fertilizer laboratory of department of soil science and plant nutrition agriculture faculty to uncle university i would like to extend my gratitudes to you crazy and flippo for the achievements of this and also previous uh the also land and meetings uh while my laboratory is one of the members of national laboratory networks under the bodies of a general directorate of plant production and general a directorate of agricultural reform of agriculture ministry in turkey and i can say that my laboratory has a primary position in that it is only the soil analyzing infrastructure partly accredited by a turkish accreditation agency so therefore it's a strong candidate to be a model for laboratory in the category of state university soil laboratories including more than turkey laboratories all over my country but on the other hand uh in addition to universal laboratories there are many soil laboratories within governmental public bodies like agriculture and environmental ministry uh and many other private laboratories with increasing number especially in countryside of turkey so looking at this situation in my country it feels like that should be a more specific frame when downscaling process of agglossalon to distinguish these laboratories types in that their management and legislatives uh they involve are completely different from each other's actually i do understand that we are trying to connect soil laboratories to each other in terms of global uh analytical procedures but i'm trying to say that these laboratories within different categories like governmental private and university state university laboratories are completely different from each other's in terms of their management and the legislates of they involve so what do you think about this opinion this situation so in my opinion different laboratories should be represented by their own representatives and then they can be connected to a national level representatives in each country and then finally to glossolam thank you so much thank you very much for your question indeed like uh the like a different type of laboratories is an issue this is why we really when we build a country profile we really like to know which type of laboratories are present in the operating in the country but there are some while you mean like as you mentioned like there are some aspects that can create conflicts among laboratories so the legislation the type of the purpose of the laboratories of course university laboratories will have other main different goals from a private laboratory but they can be still supporting each other for instance organizing PT in some activities they can work together or for instance downscaling activities of glossolam this because our activities can be interested both for private for public labs for all different types of labs so the purpose of this way we want you to establish your own work plan because we don't want all national networks doing the same stuff because among each country they can be they can they can be they can be conflicts uh among the activities that different type of laboratories will want to want to achieve want to implement so we would like national network to meet first of all and discuss about which are the priorities which if there are some common activities that they can implement together if everybody agree on just having PT okay that's still fine for us that's please organize your own PT at national level that will be already a big success if there are some other priorities please add them so PT is I don't know let's look for Donald's all together let's find common problem if common solution to the problems that everybody has this is why the first step of the network is to discuss among the among please first of all find numbers so find for all laboratories operating in the country and which type of laboratory they are discuss about your problems about your main goals and if there are some common features please pursue them together these are the these the ultimate goal of the national networks I don't know if these answer your question yeah okay thank you for your explanations people I don't know if you look at someone to add something on that for this finding it can I please please yeah yeah yeah hello yeah can you hear me now yeah one very important thing for glossolan it's very technical the idea is for the for the labs to provide results that the customer can be confident in and that are comparable after this of course there are some issues of what the people will do with the results how you are running your lab with budget but this is not the concern of glossolan the concern of glossolan is I take some sample I send it to different labs am I going to get the same result if I cannot get the same result to which lab can I be confident in which lab can I trust so I think it's the benefit of the lab to show what they are doing the customer can be confident in and whatever the status research routine private public the labs will benefit to exchange samples and make PT together and in fact when we speak about national networks as Philippe said after this you can use that tool and and the voice that glossolan is spreading to show different activities but at the beginning it's the labs and it it's a benefit you you see we're just facilitator to get results customer can be confident in and that are comparable so it's a very technical issue you see this is the first step after this each network can act differently but glossolan is involved only in the technical aspect thank you Christian this will be an asset I mean like consider also the national networks as an instrument indeed as a tool that you can use for implementing your activities to the really local scale to reach every lab living in your country and to implement your activities as you want because for instance for sure there are some activities that you would like to to implement that glossolan cannot or is not thinking about implement so national networks can really can be an instrument to address your own problems at your local scale in addition to the challenges that we are trying to to address at regional at the global scale so if there are not more questions I would like to proceed with the example from Hungary where a former network already exists a national level internet by the government and so now there are let's say halfway through the establishment of the network if i'm correct if i'm correct so please Agnes so i'm here but i can't share my screen okay please go you can start okay welcome to everybody i'm Agnes Naid from Hungary I will take a presentation our not established yet soil national laboratory network yeah so our network status is not established yet and it's haven't got a name yet but we have got some experiences for this topic first we used to have a government a soil laboratory network and now we have a lot of the laboratories to operate since 2007 and we plan we will make a contact list to the non-hungarian soil laboratories we can use a list from our operating procedure and we have a national soil proficiency test and we can use the report where we can find a participation list and the third one is a website national accreditation authorities website where every laboratories with the accreditation are there after the aerosol and glossolam meetings we set a date and send email to the laboratories about that but now we don't know when it will be the date because we would like to organize it live meeting first so we haven't known yet the date sorry the previous one yeah okay at the first meeting we would like to take presentation about aerosolam and glossolam and we would like to tell about the benefits for laboratories of joining aerosolam or the national soil laboratory network and after this meeting the laboratories can decide to join the network format next yeah we don't know the number of the soil laboratories i think there would be 20 or 25 we haven't got any half to establish the network but we have some problems with that first we had a soil laboratory network in the past when there were more governmental laboratories in our system but now only we had the the only one soil laboratory with chemical and physical parameters and the other with biological parameters and now we don't know the no governmental laboratories would we like to join national system or not and the second problem is a contact list because we haven't got to the contact to these laboratories but but i mentioned that we use three types of help first our our system second the national pt list and the national accreditation authorities website we plan it in october yeah and let's see the our plan first we we're inviting the laboratories to the first meeting by email from the main contact list we want to take presentation about gloss on meetings euro salam meetings benefits to join euro salam benefits to join national soil network for example organization of proficiency tests for our parameters or discuss our common problems after the meeting the participations make decision to join the national soil network we plan that organize an annual meeting where we can discuss our experiences and report on what's new at gloss on and euro salam and thanks for your attention thank you very much darkness we're running a little bit late so if there are no questions i will just move to the following presenter no question okay i know is one hand from here from zimbabwe you have a question what you want to know i have a question for our colleague from us and we are using in the infrared soil spectroscopy i want to find out how they are done with the standardization and the how many depths are used in soil spectroscopy for parameter soil parameter measurements and lindo are you are you there you listen to the question and lindo no yes no yes we can hear you will you listen to the question yeah can you repeat sorry no yeah from no bbq please repeat the question i want to find out what you are using near infrared soil spectroscopy how many depths are using document or what parameters i think you're coming with the connection and lindo maybe we can try to give him the floor when he's back with the connection i think he has a problem so we i send this question so as soon as lindo is back with the connection we can try to answer you okay so now is the turn of zimbabwe washington are you there yes lindo thank you okay good afternoon so i'm presenting you the example from zimbabwe which is an example of the other country that is trying to establish a network so not established yet if i'm correct um but still like washington will tell you more yes this is the presentation can you see it yes yes thank you very much filipo i'm just going to talk about our zimbabwe cell network which is still in the in the formative stages but um possibly before i do that i will introduce myself a little bit i'm the senior agriculture in the industrial research chemist as the zimbabwe sugar association research institute formally zimbabwe sugar association experiment station in zimbabwe maybe we can go to the next slide so the experiment station was formed 50 years ago and the purpose was to assist sugar ken farmers in various areas but inclusive of for fertilizer application through soil analysis and we do analyze for foliar water and cane we are located on the southern low level of zimbabwe it's actually same the same arid area but mostly the crop there is sugar ken next right some of the parameters we analyze in our lab is like i think most soil labs ph is an issue and we do the calcium chloride method and then on the phosphate we use what is called the resin method this one estimates the the plant uptake of phosphate we also do exchangeable bases like potassium sodium magnesium and calcium and micronutrients such as iron, copper, manganese and zinc which were found to actually contribute to yield we analyze for boron in both soils and plant material and of course nitrogen incubated nitrogen in soils of hammock meter and texture we've got a few instruments we are still in the process of acquiring more instruments but we've got uv this for phosphate analysis and we just bought a new icp or es we have been using the nas for a while and we also do carbon nitrogen sulfur the combustion method using the instrument by leko called the true through spec and for environmental analysis we use the gcms because it's a it's a concern for our our clients who buy our sugar that it has to be free of any chemicals right as a lab we participate in proficient schemes uh under agri-lasa which is the South Africa best we have been trying to be part of the web power but we've been limited by finances so we've been concerned that we don't have a local soil proficient scheme in the country uh because that will really benefit us in terms of servings on foreign currents because when we send our symbols to South Africa we have to to pay courier services which becomes unbearable right so tending to the Zimbabwe soil lab network this name has been confirmed by our coordinator Mr Ichikwari uh so we are in the process of establishment and the procedure or the process we are looking forward to within the next few months probably hopefully before the end of the year is to identify the labs which can be part of the soil learning and some of the labs shown interest uh use that Zimbabwe I think you've seen the time pink was we was actually just asked the question there the WTRFB uh CEDIC then the Department of Soil and Interstate Services and in ourselves FSG ETC we we are hoping that invest labs will also join because maybe our country is actually agro best so there's a lot of effort to actually uplift our agriculture sector we have been level with the bread basket of Africa at some point but our youth have declined drastically and we want to address the soil fertility issues so health and fertility issues so we hope that as soon as possible we'll be able to call for a meeting to discuss the terms of reference and probably I don't know whether calling the elected leadership but at least we need a secretariat of some sort which can be coordinated by DR and SS and then one of the key issues will be to harmonize our laboratory methods because we are currently we we're all using different methods and of course the 50 and the very most important thing will be the learning of the profession's testing schemes right what number of labs as I have already indicated we are expecting more than 10 labs to participate and I'm sure that will be inclusive of other universities because the labs which I mentioned most of them are private laboratories which who are also commercial in nature we have not been able to secure any funding for activities and we're hoping that of course that's a major issue that for now the individuals laboratory might be able to to finance maybe the coming to meetings and so forth but hopefully if we get it done life will be much easier as mentioned by Philippo we also been affected by COVID-19 like everybody else actually this is the year when we are supposed to be launching ourselves but because of restricted movement we have not been able to meet however we're hoping that you would use the technology such as Zoom to help some conferences but in some places we have got network challenges right so so far we can say they have no meetings but I had taken a personal interest in the establishment of some kind of an association is with the emphasis on the profession scheme so I visited quite a number of labs some a year or two ago which included the department of research and the soil science USZ science department CEDIC and then TRFB and all the four labs when discussing the management they agreed that it was necessary that we work together at the labs we also have what is called this bug with soil science society which I'm sure they'll also be interested in us forming this network right and again I think like all the other networks the proficiency just in scheme should be at the top of the list and harmonization of methods and of course where they are deficiencies we will be able to to help to help training programs okay so now and also encourage members to be accredited to standards like ISO 17 0 to 5 and also assist the labs in actually getting those accreditation which is especially for the commercial labs it's important that they they get the accreditation we're also looking forward to research and method development I'm sure I'm not sure whether any of our local labs are yet into MIRA and in IR with regards to soil analysis so I'm hoping those are some of the areas which we need to explore funds permitting otherwise thank you very much for for your attention I think I'm happy to answer any questions thank you very much Washington he was a good point also the idea to let the national soil society or soil association to be part of be at least aware that the national network for soil laboratory exists or is establishing the country maybe they can help you in that if there are no questions for him I will proceed with the next example of the national soil laboratory network it is from grain and Maxime Maxime Aguder can you hear me yes great let me show the screen yeah can you see your presentation yes okay please go ahead here to everyone's little role and I introduce some laboratory heat instrumental of soil research methods standardization and meteorology our national scientific center with our national web now in the establishment and official name our national soil laboratory network UNC lab Ukrainian national soil laboratory so I can tell you about step by steps and actual I expected to proceed for procedure for established our national soil laboratory network is first of all we collected information of the availability of specialized laboratory in Ukraine after that we are receiving the contact of specialized laboratory invitation we're sent to participate in the network and national laboratories so next steps will be within a short period of time the laboratories got guaranteed with the initiative to the create a network of national laboratories to register all the websites in a profile form at nine at now at the moment information is being collected and the presence of non-coil laboratories in related departments university academies, academies organization of various forms of ownership ownership in the process of work and number of laboratories we're not involved in the network of laboratories due to various reasons including first of all lack on the required quality on the laboratories it means the laboratory is located even in another country it's our our difficulties in our country and analyzes service in the offered in the Ukraine lack on the interested person personal for the network's profile work and low-level laboratory quality is any annual re-intest is carried out in verification and our our Ukraine the next one please now we have in our laboratory actual seven laboratories and expected to to next year and first of all we opticals encourage you to establish our network first at the cloud of laboratory personals as a result lack of the time to understand the problems and the solution so we can solve this problem to require times in the resource of the execution of the documents along with the annual re-intest so next during the re-intest our number is 28 due to the lack of the sophistication for the research method we could not analyze them because we not certificate to the sub-studies is this indicator supplant to the conduct and analyzes and the next one that this is too many knowledge which was a laboratories it was planned to hold about five meetings within representatives of then of the national network due to guarantees of each states for the in-testing the meetings that were cancelled internet online conference have not been yet held due to technical unavailability of number of laboratories please next one so we are planning develop and approval the plan plan of the implementation on the SOP was so long and the national level discuss i agree on the plan of academic council the national center after that after translation approvals all the SOPs we are playing distributes distribute them our the backbone network in our laboratories and discuss them later and we are male after that the distribution of the SOP through the national network receive the feedback from them comments additional questions other and i agree to sub-fence action is implementation of the SOP after that we are specifying the deadlines it's planned to introduce SOPs according to the approval plan conducting the mandatory yeah excuse me and training seminar to each SOP we believe that it's necessary to improve the level of each laboratory carry out the results obtain the SOPs and standard samples i agree with as a data in the Netherlands yes no unfortunately COVID-19 it's difficult to our country and we are trying to solve this problem now thank you Felipe thank you Maxine for your presentation if they're not question i'll give a few seconds for us the hands okay the next speaker no question okay next speaker is from Nigeria i'm sorry this one from Tembinkozi there is a hands up i think still the the previous question to Mozambique please remember to mute your microphone when you are not talking to us from Zimbabwe you have another question is the same from Mozambique yeah it was a question for Mozambique we can try to see if it's not connected we cannot find it in many more let's say maybe in the end if he's back we can try to to ask him the question okay hello yeah Arlindo are you there so yes i got a problem of network here no problem okay you don't understand so if you can quickly answer the question on from Zimbabwe yeah but i prefer to to mr of the colleague of Zimbabwe can write i can answer sorry yeah please from Zimbabwe you can write in the chat a privately to maybe to also we can all read the question and the answer please type in the chat your question so Arlindo from Mozambique can it's fine brilliant okay perfect so we move forward the next figure is from Nigeria mr Egbe Williams yet we present their their national network that is on already established with quite a high number of labs even correct 36 labs are already registering the Nigerian network so are you there Egbe yes yes i am there can you hear me yeah just a moment yes let me show your presentation okay can you see it yes i can see it okay please go ahead the different is yours yes okay my presentation is about the national soil lab network nice Solan i am Egbe Williams as is the national soil fertilizer and water laboratory located in Kaduna we are a four front front reference laboratory in Nigeria a analyzing soil fertilizer and water now next slide the status of our lab is already of our network is already established and it is named nice Solan now the actual number of labs participating about 36 in the network now and we are trying to increase the network within the next the last one week about six labs also joined us and the the actual or expected procedure for establishing the national soil lab in Nigeria the first thing we did was to do lab data collection across the country that was around a up to November last year characterization, eventarization required a visit to all the labs to identify all the public labs the private labs and all the universities labs and the research institutes and universities we're able to register the labs into the network now in that process we're able to administer the gluselin flyers also and questionnaire we had a prototype that we developed in Nigeria to know what they do their activities and to be able to elicit them into the network. Fourthly the names of the labs head of lab will be contacted then personally took their data by gluselin around March this year 2020 to every of the labs that are participating in our network next slide now the actual number of labs in the network is 36 at the moment and a lot of labs are still indicating interest to participate we had problem with the pandemic that slowed down our activities if not would have elicit them into the network already now specify please specify if you receive any help for establishing the network now we the help we receive was not from our government directly it was from the Nigerian Institute of Soil Science under the leadership of professor V2D which is the GSB focal person for Nigeria he assisted us so immensely to make sure we get vehicle from the institute travel personally to all these universities and institutes check and did inventorization rolled into the networks now the obstacle we encountered with this exercise was getting adequate information on the existing soil lab and taking decision on which lab qualifies to be enlisted into the network now we overcame that by the intervention base was able to give us a database we checked through the institutions the private labs and we were able to get their data for that now we will note that it provided the necessary information via the database as I earlier said secondly the problem we encountered was establishing contact and reaching out to the delineated laboratories considering the vast nature of our country now he also intervened by providing the contacts through the private labs because he has been working all over the country for a very long time he roots them on our behalf and sponsored the initial wide event transition exercise to all the labs and then ruled them into the network next slide now we have not had any physical meeting upon establishment of the network the network was from around February 2020 and in March litters were sent by glusolan to every one of them and the plan was on to launch the the first meeting of NISOLAN in the second quarter of 2020 which was halted by the pandemic however NISOLAN has a water platform for information, dissemination and data sharing we actually have a match some activities that we plan to do in the year 2020 that was harmonization of metals and the training of personnel but as it is now with the pandemic that those activities have been shifted to the year 2021 and we hope to do our best in the year 2021 and light the network and launch all activities in full force thank you thank you very much thank you very much a good example thank you again another next presentation the last one on these these items is from belgium comments are you there yes okay let me look for your presentation i'm going to do your case study from belgium and it's a good example also because it's an example of a country that sometimes the country that can have secretly division into region and decentralization and administrative decentralization belgium is one of these countries and is an example of a let's say a sub-national network and they don't have their own national network in belgium but a network for the valoni that is one one one of the two main region of belgium and now also comments we'll talk about that it's a good example so because as far as i know if i can understand correctly it's a network where the workload increased a lot in the years and you have to address this set is this issue like by addressing more human resources especially on these items correct so please comments yes is yours but i don't see the presentation did you see it no no yeah okay i see it thank you uh so i will tell you a bit more about about the request network so i already told you just a bit earlier and this afternoon so the network was established in 30 years ago already so in 1989 and so this is not a national like philippo said a national network but it only concerned the source part of belgium so the valoni uh how the the the network was established actually in the 70s some people here in belgium heard about an e spectroscopy which was a brand new analytical metal and they were very interested in it they felt it was a very good way to to make analysis and so they wanted to develop it in valonia and quite at a same time but also in the 80s researchers scientists and also users observed that for a same so simple they could get different analytical results and those fertility advices and so it was quite a problem because if a farmer goes to do two different labs it doesn't know how many fertilizer he needs to put on his film so it was decided to create the waloon soil commission in 1982 and then in 1989 all these people decided to to work together and to create the lab the laboratory network which was called requested so we have we are quite lucky because the country is not that big so a lot of people from the scientific world knows each other so it was quite easy to create the network and so the network is constituted among others of research laboratories routine laboratories and finally the users the farmers but also the citizens there are other partners but there are more administrative so i won't tell you about it about them here and in 1994 the first official agreement was written between all the partners it is an official document that where all the the tasks are written so we are sure that everybody agree on what we're working on so it's really a work plan on what everyone needs to do currently there are five routine laboratories so it's quite small but the country is small you see on the map the location of the different laboratories and they do different types of analysis so there are only five laboratories for soil but there are more for the other types of analysis so there are infrared analysis microbiology manual soils and nitrogen soils spread all over the territory we when the the network was established we got public funds so from regional and provincial levels and still nowadays we have regular public funds from these two from different institutions public really public funds during the establishment of the network we didn't really had trouble because it was something that was wanted by all the the partners so it was there were all the people at that time agreed on creating this network but nowadays we have less and less money and people for the same amount or even more work so we try to to use funds of the last but it's not always easy and we also try to fix the priorities between all the tasks of the work plan but i'm interested in your suggestion to overcome this problem because i guess i'm like we saw i'm not the only one facing facing it and something that we have now and that was already there in the past is that all the partners will have the same priorities and the same opinions so we try to fix the priorities and by the majority and also to make the decisions by the majority and that leads to people some people are still unsatisfied but we don't have other options there will always be people unsatisfied so we have quite a lot of activities within this network first we have a huge database because all the routine labs of the network put all their analytical results in this database so since the early 90s we are feeding this database and so we shared with the website that you can see here and also with publications and and apps we make a comparison and development of analytical methods like organic carbon surfer or the NIR method was developed within the network and we also have a working group on fertility advices so we discuss about the how to interpret the analytical results to give fertility advices what are the current problems on on the territory and how can we address them then we have we developed different tools but many for sampling so first in the 90s the network bought gps and so all the labs got gps to go on the field and then we developed an online tool which is called Récois Cartour and here you have two two maps that are given by this this tool as you might know when you go to the field you need to take a sample on an emergency zone and to help the labs to do that when they need to go to the field so they just drew they just draw the the field that need to be sampled and then they got information on a type of soil and the type of soil I converted into homogenous zone so when the the sampler goes to the field he knows where he need to go to to stay in an homogenous zone to take a sample and this tool also permits to farmers to ask to make an online analytical request directly to the lab by buying the gps and using the gps in the routine laboratories we have a quite performant database because all the data are geolocalizated and we also have the possibility to draw maps and so to follow the evolution of the different parameters on especially but also overtime like I said previously we organize pts different SOPs are also written to make sure that all the labs work the same way we make reference materials so we sample prepare and distribute reference material to be used as witness in the routine labs and we also make interlaboratory audits so one lab goes to another lab to make audits just like I would say for fun and so we can help each other to improve and get official accreditation and really have advice between all the laboratories we also make trainings on iso standards and analytical method etc and then we give a common answer to requests from the agriculture need and question at the political or field level so we really try to give a unique message for all the territory we also have like I said so the requesting network have different types of analysis so we try to to talk to each other because we can make link between SOAR with menu with the new technology that can help to answer some questions and we also have partnerships with older agriculture structures on the territory to move forward all together and really give a unique message to the users so thank you for your attention and if you have questions feel free to ask them okay thank you very much I think was a very good example because your network instance implement some type of activities that are quite sensitive advanced like for instance this database that is really useful for farmers for instance and I think there's a good example also for the other networks to follow this kind of activities for instance so I'm reading to the chat if you have question about on this topic of national networks establishment or to one of the presenters please type in the chat or raise your hand for instance we have a question for you Clomance from Alan Evans from Portugal he asking he's asking do any private labs participate in the Belgian scheme no there are only public labs we try to open just the pts to private labs but all the labs from the network are financed by by public funds thank you very much yeah I think the question from Reiner to the Nigerian celebratory network with Egbe the question for you yes yes in the chat is Reiner is asking one of the objectives is to collect data from local labs you mentioned so the question is which data you're collecting from the labs and which lab will voluntarily share its raw data go through and then data if there is what you mean and allow control visits and then what does the national network offer back to the labs yes by lab data I mean to say you obtain on the spot information of all the labs earmarks to join the network now we're concerned about the personnel the equipment the facilities they have now one of the reasons why the inventorization exercise was embarked on was to know the lab capability their capacity and to equally participate in a fertilizer regulation bill that was passed into law in Nigeria it was not specifically to collect lab collect lab data as per the work they do thank you okay Reiner I hope this answer your question otherwise please Reiner thank you thanks a lot I understand okay I saw that from Vito Kristoff here I raise the end please submit yourself Kristoff yeah I just want to to get some comment on well the cost of the proficiency testing I mean in the the other region of Belgium we have only private labs doing the analysis and at some point also we had a discussion on the costs and the difficulties of getting funds and basically together with all the private labs we made an agreement that we will make a very huge portion of soil to be distributed amongst them and they would pay for them so all the private labs agreed that to get some kilograms of soil they had to pay a certain amount and we have a two times discussion on the results with those private labs to see where they are and to discuss what we can do about it so basically the whole system is now paid by the private labs and for them it's a very good opportunity because they are meant to measure on every measurement room the sample so for them they got a representative sample and it has been discussed so it has a lot of added value as well and this is one way how maybe to circumvent some costs on the proficiency test yeah good inputs you can ask you like so you are in the other part of Belgium in your new plan this no David is there do we have a similar type of network in your region yes yes I think it's really very similar with with with with that one yeah yeah for sure I was just wondering that is another question for comments from the Netherlands and they're asking if you intend to scale your PT to neighborhood countries is an interesting question because as I mentioned in some cases while some countries are very wide and very large and can be suitable to establish a network and a PT exercise in some other cases countries are really small so they don't have enough labs to to perform such activity but in this case I think the in both the Netherlands and Belgium are quite a lot of labs but still can be interesting to upscale the PT to neighborhood countries I think also Christian can can agree on that but please comments so if you want to answer to Netherlands so do you intend to upscale your PT to neighborhood countries actually we would like to have more participants still the problem is the language because we write the reports in French and it's already a lot of work and so if you want to write them in English it would be even more work so we mainly are looking for countries that can understand the report in French okay here there is a question from Vincent Luga about the policies the closing policies to address the problems okay we develop many many documents if you our website you can see many guidelines many many documents for instance Bosnia is working on SOPs but please if you can if you can be more precise which kind of problems I can address your question easily because Bosnia is working as you know Bosnia is working on different subjects from equipment purchasing to SOP harmonization I think it's in that relation to your presentation which kind of support we can do in establishing yes Vincent are you there yes I'm here Philippe okay yes my question is in regard to your slides okay you mean so our gloss on can help you in establishing your network now is correct hello yeah is the question related to the establishment of your network how gloss on can help you in that yes yes yes yes yes as I mentioned like gloss on can help you by giving you for instance the list of all countries registered in gloss on from your country so this is the first step so we can you know the national networks are like a further step so far we have all countries registered we have a database according to the country and region so we have a list of all laboratories operating in different countries so first step can be give you the all the laboratories operating in your country to establish a first communication among you and then gloss on and can help you in for sure as Lucretia already mentioned with their website because your country will have your it's on every every country will have its own country profile on the website to present its activities to encourage donors to implement their activities in that country in those labs and and gloss on an organization I mean don't forget that before gloss on there is the restaurant so your regional network and your chair and vice chair I'm more than sure and they will be happy to to support you in that to to look for financial resources to look for organizational meetings writings of terms of reference so vending on the on the issue you have different people you can ask support too okay thank you so much thank you all right so last questions there is a hands up from Reiner is ready to the previous question we address okay more right okay okay I wrote down my question I was I was wondering when you want to get in contact with various private labs or other local labs how closely are you cooperating or in touch with the farm advisory services I remember I mean where should the support for a national soil laboratory should come from either laboratories are cooperating because they cooperate in a national soil monitoring or they work for municipalities to investigate contaminated soil or they provide advice to farmers for example for fertilization practices maybe also some research projects but maybe I will put them aside but where's the funding coming from that the funding is coming from mandated tasks where several labs work together and I really wonder how the experiences for example in Belgium maybe also in the in the current developments in Hungary how how the cooperation with the farm advisors is because they rely on good labs I remember an excursion or a visit in Morocco where farmers receive support for fertilization if they have a fertilization recommendation based on soil analysis and comparison between labs from the university in Babat showed that they are absolutely incomparable you can also invent figures so the the quality of laboratories for farm advisors is extremely important so are you when you look into national labs is that cooperation with farm advisors yes so this person should address this question to the to those network which already working because they can give a nice experience on where they get the funding from if I got understood like your question regards where to take these funds no isn't it yeah it's a bit about the momentum like we have we have received several presentations some presentations for example the one by Arknis mentioned that they have a bit of struggle to find the laboratories no so here my question would be more a suggestion to contact let's say the national farm advisors in another presentation from Belgium we have rich experience where laboratories voluntarily cooperate it and exchange information and so on and I wonder whether there is experience that can be shared on how which role farm advisors played yes I think this like should like it depends on the the purpose of the network I mean so what we were discussing with Cam from Turkey before like if the network agree on working mainly the priorities I mean if the world is working with farmers of course we should have a larger attention on that topic and look for funding in that area and this is why the entire national network should agree on which are the priorities the type of labs which should be involved in the in the network and which are the area of interest in the network is research mainly for for even the type of analysis they prefer to perform in that case like special funding in that in that topics should be looked for and especially the type of activities that will be implemented by the national network will depend on the main areas of interest of the network itself I know if it is answer your question but because I really I cannot hear you very well so I think I lost part of your question but I don't know if this answer your question or not otherwise please ask slowly because I really can hear you very well Christian want to add something yes I would like to add something about the financial needs especially concerned PT so sole preparation and probably making the statistical analysis sending back the result the report sorry sorry I have problem with my connections yeah and so sending back the report and I think of course we can find strategies as it was said also in the other part of Belgium by Christophe that they they try to get fundings from the private companies but there is a general question in fact in 2015 was the International Year of Souls and so the General Assembly of the United Nations what is something I think quite important decided that we have an International Year of Soil to rise awareness about that natural resource and I think the global sole partnership has the final objective to have comparable results at the world scale and after this we have to organize in regional networks and as you said downscale but awareness is also one of the pillar from GSP and I think awareness of the national institution is very important and when Heinar mentioned about the the farmers this means the ministry of agriculture should be concerned and the budget that is necessary is very limited and it was mentioned also the cost of the samples the PT that was provided by Glossolan in 2019 the samples I mean that were sent were free for the labs this does not mean it's a cheap product it has a high cost incredible high cost not only preparing the soil not only sending it but the hours the hours it took to negotiate with the customs and so on so each of this sample is a very important product and we need public support I think Glossolan the regional networks and the national networks need to explain that this is made to have an international assessment of the soil resources and this is extremely important so that the Ministry of Agriculture are involved in the different countries but Heinar mentioned also urban I think it's Heinar or someone else about the urban soils and the contamination more than half of the population yeah sorry I said the half of the population now is living in the cities and we have not in the current Glossolan assessment or measurement of soil parameters related to chemical contaminate heavy metals or such type of contamination because the SOP is in fact that yeah now we can hear you yeah sorry for that network problem I don't know what's happening yeah so not not many mentioned but we will be working on this and so this means also Ministry of Environment and over over state organization or institutions must be involved and I think this is also something that the GSP is doing with the pillar dedicated to awareness and I think it's also important to try to make the the data available and the people sensitive to the work that is done in the lab usually you see it's not very no not very fancy not very trendy when you show results of a PT so but the people must understand how important it is to have good data for good decision making and this this is really a challenge that is okay addressed in another Glossolan PT this is why the the problem that the people have at the national level is also something that we try to solve at international levels and hopefully it will help also the national networks later on sorry for a little bit long answer but I think it's a very important issue and we have seen how much final constraints are limiting the what is possible to do at the lab level yeah I think was useful your this clarification thank you very much I think we're running late I think we should move forward to the last presentation of the day yes so again thanks everybody to all presenter and participants in the discussion we now move to the last item in the agenda for today that is a kind of case study from Portugal we have Mr Alan Evans from A2 analysis chemical cell of Portugal to tell us about the experience of their laboratory so a small fish in a small sea the perspective of a private soil testing laboratory in Portugal Alan the floor is yours okay I hope everybody can hear me good I'd just like to say first of all thank you very much for the opportunity to present at this meeting we haven't been members of Gossalon for very long so we thank you for the opportunity that that you've given us here so I'm going to present to you today a bit of our experience that we've had in Portugal here over the past years that we've had our soil analysis lab can go to the next slide please just a quick explaining explainer my name obviously isn't Portuguese I don't have a Portuguese accent because I'm originally from from England and I moved to Portugal in the year 2000 and I've been living and working here ever since in 2000 we founded a privately owned soil analysis laboratory which is located in a city called Guimarães which is in northern Portugal what motivated us to start this laboratory was really I've been in a market survey that there wasn't really any response time that was good for the the Portuguese farmers when they wanted their analysis done they seemed to be waiting for very long times until they got the results which we thought wasn't particularly acceptable so what we did was we invested in high quality equipment such as dry combustion ICP microwave digestion to provide this rapid analysis and turnaround time for the Portuguese farmers we started our laboratory with just two people working there and over these years it has grown to sustain eight people here working in our laboratory our main type of analysis of soils vegetable matter water growing media soil improves among other things for the past few years we've also been working on getting the laboratory accredited but this has been a bit more difficult than what we perceived when we first started next please thank you just a little bit of background from what I could find on the internet about farming in Portugal just so you can get a little bit of an idea of what's going on here now these numbers are from 2016 so there might have been a change over the past few years but around 2016 we there were about 26 260 000 farms in Portugal registered farms and about half of these more or less were dedicated to the production of arable crops those are the people that we really wanted to to get in contact with and try and get them to do the soil analysis we're another 28 percent which were just cattle farmers and then there was 22 percent which were a mixture of cattle and crops next please thank you just here we have a small table just to give you an idea of the time the the size of the farms that were we're talking about here the area of the farm we have most of them about 70 percent 75 percent are all farms under 20 hectares so really what we're talking here is quite small scale farmers mostly producing food and for the most part it is for exportation we do have a few farmers with greater than 1,000 hectares of land but as Portugal is a reasonably small country then we don't have that many farmers with greater than 1,000 hectares of land because there really isn't that much space for them to fit into so this is an approximate state of affairs of laboratories in Portugal some laboratories do not offer all the services we might associate with soil analysis so this is just a really a brief resume of what i could find so about four small privately owned laboratories 17 colleges which have farming courses which offer simple type of soil analyses 14 universities which have farming courses associated with them which are able to offer a great deal of types of services there is one state owned laboratory now we have three international laboratories which are they're not situated in Portugal but they have representatives in Portugal and their representatives will go to the farmers collect the soil samples and send them to other laboratories out the side of Portugal and there are also a couple of laboratories which are associated with fertilizer companies so as you can see for a reasonably small country there are quite a lot of laboratories which are working in one form or another so problems that we encounter as a private laboratory which has really no we have no connection to the public laboratories who may have other types of problems so what we find is that there are probably too many laboratories in Portugal for the number of farmers that are present all things being equal we're talking here about 6 000 samples a round number from each farm so that really isn't sustainable from a business point of view and has made the work that we do a lot more difficult because if we're not turning a reasonably large profit every year then it's much harder to buy equipment invest what in these equipment and then bring new services to the Portuguese farms another thing that we found is that there is a lack of education here about the usefulness of soil analysis a good percentage of our clients are really only interested in the soil analysis because they need it to get subsidies from the European Union they're not particularly interested in the fact that the soil analysis can be used as a tool to increase their production and increase the environmental impact that their farm has and part of this problem is also some of the government rules here in Portugal which can actually dissuade people from performing regular soil analysis by on it for instance obliging these people to do the the soil analysis once every four years which are the people who really who are just interested in having a little bit of paper to say that they've done the soil analysis is not really very good for sustaining and developing soil science in Portugal one of the other things we have here in Portugal is that we have quite a lot of unfair competition i'm not sure if it's the same in in other private companies in other countries as well but one of the things we found that the university and state-run laboratories are obviously able to apply much easily for the European grants and state grants for their research purposes and then these research these machines which are bought for research purposes are then used to not only conduct research but they are also used to create more money for the laboratories which then removes the part of the power that the privately owned laboratories have to capture capture their clients because the publicly owned laboratories are able to practice soil analysis prices which privately run laboratories find it almost impossible to compete with and once we're talking about relatively poor country here in Portugal then normally the people of the farmers will sometimes opt for the the cheapest choice rather than one of the the more expensive choices and also by us paying our taxes here in Portugal the privately owned laboratories are in a certain way also subsidizing our competitors next slide sorry thank you another problem we found is that accreditation here in Portugal is extremely expensive the the Portuguese accreditation agency is obviously the only one here in Portugal so they pretty much are able to set whatever prices they need and if we are trying to turn a profit and also serve the farmers in the best way possible and the accreditation being extremely expensive to acquire and maintain is also made much more difficult when we are not able to practice prices which would turn the the accreditation into something which was routine and not particularly damaging to the company's accounts another problem which we first is that the when we tried to begin our process of accreditation that the accreditation assesses in Portugal don't really have any specific experience in soil analysis they have experience in water analysis and food analysis there are lots of things which are similar between the the process of accrediting water analysis and food analysis but I'm surely agree with me that soil analysis does have some specific details that really the assessor would need to know I can just tell you one of the first experiences we had with one of these assessors is that we had a we have our ICP in our laboratory and the assessor came to me and was asking me to show him the metallic parts of the instrument to prove that it wasn't contaminating the analysis samples we were doing and he was quite shocked to learn that all the parts which carry the sample from the the tube to the the plasma itself are all made of plastic and glass and this was the person who was supposed to be helping us with the accreditation procedure perhaps the the most complicated thing we found about the accreditation procedure is the lack of software for reporting soil analysis results because we have somebody who's working with us a computer technician who is developing or trying to help us develop a program which he already has a base for to to create a program which is more specific for soil analysis results because it's not possible to use his program that he has for water analysis and directly adapt it to soil analysis results as we have lots of different calculations to do some of the parameters for soil analysis have no real comparison with water or even food analysis so this is another problem that we've continued to have and really need some help in solving so in this next slide there are some ways that I would like to see if Glossalon can possibly help us with these problems just some ideas because like I said at the beginning of the presentation we haven't really been part of Glossalon for too long we're not exactly 100 percent sure what might have been discussed in other meetings one of the things that would really help us is maybe if we had some this could also be done by Glossalon or even the the national soil laboratory the national soil network sorry which could maybe produce these posters and flyers which could be sent to the farming associations and to other other places where farming is practiced here in Portugal just to maybe educate the farmers a bit more about the usefulness of a soil analysis and not to see that as an expense but really as a tool just as a tractor the user tractor as a tool the soil analysis can also be seen as being a tool to help them produce more fruit vegetables whatever they would like to produce the second one if Glossalon or somebody has any ideas how to eliminate these unfair business practices which we believe that we're seeing that equipment which should be has been bought with funds supposedly used for research are being paid are being used to analyse paid samples which the private laboratories here in Portugal have great difficulty competing just to give you an example there are some laboratories here for a simple soil analysis would be paying five euros when and the client would have to pay five euros for that for example when as the private laboratory to be able to practice those prices is nearly impossible once we begin calculating equipment costs personnel costs social security and all these things it is impossible for us to compete with those prices and the only reason that those prices are able to be used is because the equipment that they are using has not been paid for by them also another thing which would be interesting for us and perhaps are the laboratories here in the network is if Glossalon the network had possibly some trained soil accreditation experts who could be used possibly by internet meetings to help debate various problems which we have with the analysis suggest solutions and maybe just be used as a let's say an extra helping hand when when laboratories try and go through the accreditation process have maybe two or three specialists who we know that we could turn to and have our questions answered instead of turning to somebody who's perhaps an expert in water analysis or feed analysis you might not be able to answer our questions as easily obviously i think the standard operating procedures that Glossalon are developing at this precise moment in time will be very useful for laboratories which are trying to gain accreditation because then we have one standardized method which can be used and all laboratories will in that case all be on the same page and so just one last thing that maybe could be interesting as well and useful is that whether it be possible for Glossalon or somebody connected to that developer software program or database that the soil laboratories could use to store and report the results so all the laboratories could in somewhere be harmonized all using one certain specific program a little bit like the the previous presenter Clemens in Belgium had said that might be where they have single database for all their national samples where the results can be input and they can be and they can be accessed reasonably easily by anybody who works in with Glossalon and the last slide please okay so thank you very much for your attention and once again thank you for the possibility to present few of our problems and and our solutions that we we have encountered in our years analyzing soil here in Portugal thank you very much thank you thank you very much Alan for your presentation is there any question from the audience for Alan is there in the chat or by raising hands if not I would say that yeah I don't see any question yes I cannot react so fast finding my hands but I just wanted to acknowledge this wonderful presentation it was very extremely helpful to hear this view also to get an idea of the laboratory situation in Portugal for individual aspects there are a couple of things to exchange I would say maybe also outside of this meeting but I want to congratulate this was was very very interesting thank you thank you very much any other remarks if not I would like to Christian you wanted to say something yeah just something about the cost and the training of assessors I think this is one issue here with Glossalon I think everybody knows this and Aizu is just one way to demonstrate that you have competence and I think not many has answered in the chat we can't hear you yeah not many has answered in the chat that you have different ways to demonstrate your competency and I think this is what we try to do I mentioned already participative work but the expert making the Aizu standards or being for assessors the soil scientists the people from the lab and sometimes they are not involved and this is what we I think Glossalon is trying to do through this network to find the people having the skills and to help the people and probably in Europe the people forget too easily that yeah there is a high cost because many labs or universities have a lot of budget but it's not like this worldwide so of course I think once again GSP FAO and United Nations try to improve the things but after this for the national problems specific national problems it's impossible for Glossalon and for GSP to do anything but I agree with Reiner I appreciate it also very much your presentation showing the technical aspect and so also economical and human aspect and it was very good thanks for your presentation thank you very much thank you very much indeed if there are no further remarks I would like to close the meeting for today thanking again all presenters all moderators and all participants that ask questions and intervene in the discussion I'm just showing you the program for tomorrow they're interesting it's about equipment and with this I I wish you good evening and the good rest of the day thank you very much and see you tomorrow thank you very much goodbye goodbye all right goodbye bye