 So this is the fifth meeting of the Asian Soil Laboratory Network. It will last for three hours and it will be conducted in English. Before to go through the agenda, I would like to give the floor to the chair of SEALnet, Dr. Gina Nilo for the opening remarks. Dr. Nilo, the floor is yours. Blessings and good afternoon, everyone. Warm greetings from the Philippines. I requested Sir Pilipo as well to flash the message for the sake of those with low internet. Hi, Dr. Ducrescia, clean sister-in-law and everyone else. I miss you. Okay. Warm greetings from the Philippines. It is a blessed day to everyone. It is with great pleasure to open this virtual gathering, the fifth Asian Soil Laboratory Network SEALnet meeting. We are indeed blessed and privileged that despite the COVID-19, we are able to meet virtually, physically healthy and with committed hearts in fulfilling our responsibilities for our countries through our sustainable use of our soil and water resources through our support to FAO Global Soil Partnership. In particular, the mission of PTRM5, Harmonization of Methods, Measurements and Indicator for the Sustainable Management and Protection of Soil Resources. Through SEALnet, I am pleased to announce at this point that I am the newly elected Chairperson of PTR5 for 2021-2023 in the Asian Soil Partnership. With your support, together, we can elevate and expand the basic contribution of soil laboratories through this Asian network SEALnet to all other pillars of action in providing quality data that are interchangeable and comparable across locations through the harmonized test methods. We have expanded our scope of parameters since we started in 2017 from the five basic soil chemical parameters to assess soil fertility, such as pH, EC, organic carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus. Now SEALnet is contributing to soil physical and biological parameters to Glossulan, such as bulk density and soil moisture content and to the measurement of microbial and systematic activity and soil respiration. At the moment, the Philippines, together with Thailand, have prepared video presentation on test methods for organic carbon using Oakley and Black methods to be used for the training on test methods that will be conducted this year and onwards. Likewise, with all other test methods that have been adopted by Glossulan, I take this opportunity to invite all of you in all these undertakings, be it as participants to spread the value of harmonization of test methods on your country and also to volunteer and take the lead in SEALnet and Glossulan activities where you can best contribute. Last year SEALnet meeting was also held virtually on June 30 to July 2, 2020. We were enjoined by around 255 laboratory staff from 18 Asian countries. Today, let us witness the fruit of last year's meeting as we are supported by all the laboratory staff from the 24 member Asian countries of SEALnet. Indeed, we are rapidly expanding and I would like to emphasize the value of networking within your country or the establishment of the National Soil Laboratory Network for National as this network and member laboratories are able to access information, training, and even to participate at Glossulan proficiency testing programs. I congratulate each one for having done this in their own countries and to all others. I encourage you to go and multiply. There is always strength in unity and blessings overflow. With this, I would also like to acknowledge the participation of the blessed and strong women and men of all 43 member soil laboratories of the Philippines National Soil Laboratory Network, which we call SEALnet. Our network is composed of the Department of Agriculture 15 regional soil laboratories and 7 DA national agencies, 8 private soil laboratories, 7 state universities and colleges, 2 DA satellite soil laboratories, 2 provincial soil laboratories, and 2 research laboratories. Looking back to 2020, we have conducted the very first meeting of the field national which focus mainly on BSW and twin objectives in support to all soil laboratories. First, a strong network and second, the establishment of laboratories of global standards. Looking forward to November of 2021, as we mark the network's second annual meeting, we will focus on the team, the role of soil laboratories in the implementation of the National Soil Health Program. In relevance to the vision and mission of global soil partnership, I can see that the National Soil Health Program can be used as platform of Asian Regional Network Program in support to all other pillars of action as integrated in the National Soil Health Program in the country. To name a few, these are first, harmonized protocol on soil sampling and mapping of soil reference and monitoring sites as characteristics of soil health, which is under pillar four. Also under the NSHP is the establishment of techno demonstration on sustainable soil management, which is under pillar one. And third, research on the assessment of impacts of these technologies on soil health productivity and income, which is under pillar three. And lastly for pillar two, awareness raising, adoption of soil doctors program and the mainstreaming and institutionalization of the soil health program through policies and investments. And of course, foremost consideration is the role of soil laboratories in providing quality science based data through the upgrading of laboratory facilities and equipment, provision of training and the adoption of harmonized test methods among the network of soil laboratories at the national, regional and global scale, which are in particular the mission of pillar five through glossoling and seal net. As you can see, I am sharing this talk, not a mere exaggeration of our achievements. But let this be a source of inspiration and guidance to direct and unify our efforts towards meeting the mission of FAO global soil partnership to improve the governance and promote sustainable management of soils. I encourage everyone to active to actively participate and commit to the goal of glossoling and seal net. Let this be a challenge to all of us. Let us be intentional in making our national reference laboratories and all other network member laboratories as the center of excellence of soil laboratories in the Asian region. I humbly ask you, my colleagues, to put our best efforts to this great and day war of the food and agriculture organization in bringing us here together at this meeting to share one common platform, one common goal, connecting our soil laboratories, and promoting the harmonized test methods to support various decision making bodies at the international level. By this time, we should also have realized that soil laboratories are important. We serve as the backbone of science-based soil data, which are being utilized to support sustainable management of our soil resources. As the chairperson of seal net, I thank the FAO on behalf of 24 strong member countries of the Asian Laboratory Network Seal Net. Indeed, we are all committed and dedicated to sustaining seal net. Again, on behalf of seal net, we raise our hands, our convener for glossoling and seal net. We thank the director general, who don't you of FAO, Ms. Sasha Oshima, deputy director of land and water division, Mr. Roland Vargas, secretary of the Global Soil Partnership, Ms. Nopresha Kaon, and Mr. Filippo Benedicti, secretary of Global Soil Partnership, glossoling and seal net. I would also like to thank other participants from the GSP secretariat who joined us today, Ms. Carolina Oliveira and Mr. Yuso Givini. We also thank my twin sister, Ms. Nopmami Sobana, glossolan chair, Mr. Rob De Haer, glossolan vice chair, and Mr. Christian Hartman, glossolan advisor for their never-ending support to seal net. Likewise, I would like to acknowledge my vice chairs, Mr. Sanjay Isrivastava of India, and Ms. Susuin of Myanmar, who have strongly supported me all the way from 2019. Lastly, but not the least, of course, as they say, save the best for last. I would like to express my sincere appreciation to our director at the Bureau of Soil and Water Management, who also serves as the chair of the Asian Soil Partnership, engineer Pablo M. Montalia. For his earnest support to my role as the seal net chair. Also, to the entire Bureau of Soils and Water Management family and the hardworking and competent staff of laboratory services division. Great job. Indeed, this is a year of new challenges. Gina, you were muted. We cannot hear you anymore. Gina. I'm sorry, we cannot hear you. Gina. Filippo, can you try to unmute her? I'm trying. Yeah, it's possible to unmute. We can just request. Scroll down because. Gina, you were muted. We could not hear the final part of your speech, but we could read it on screen. I'm sorry. I would like to thank you for your nice work and appreciation. We also appreciate a lot of the work you're doing for the network and the partnership. Now I would like to give the floor to Ms. Nogman Eswanam, the chair of Glossam for her short, please, opening remarks. Knock the floor is yours. Thank you, Rukesia. Good morning. They are all friends. In this, it is my pleasure to welcome you to this CUNIC meeting, which this year, the meeting organized in Zoom platform and will focus on the decision making since the trainings will be provided in the form of the Webinar throughout the year. Ultimately, less or less specific work plan will be developed also during the meeting. CUNIC is going to have four years or now after the establishment in November 2017. At the time, the situation of the lab in Asia is a black block with a blur picture. We don't know much on your neighboring country's performance and how they are working on the same testing methods. But now we have more clear picture and know each other better. We have a group of friends as CUNIC network that can share and exchange the knowledge. We are succeeding in way that four years ago. We never could have imagined. Our work put emphasis on the importance of the harmonized soil characterization. Data exchange and standard through the lab network under the PLA-5 as a mean to what the achievement of the objective of the PLA-124. To already be known, all these PLA mentioned rely on the integrity of the soil data through the harmonized methods and the measurements for the sustainable management and the protection of the soil resources. I am pleased to announce that in just over four years after the establishment of the porcelain in 2017, we have come out with a lot of outcomes from the network. Some of them are already present by Gina speak. And we also provide an important number of the SOP that we can work and harmonize to work in the same way with the good quality control. Training classes were held in parallel with the regional meeting and solar free access webinar under the preparation. Absolutely. I need to extend my deep appreciation to the GSB FAO, the GSB Cathalia team for supporting the efforts to further develop the role of the national mechanism for promoting the harmonization of the soil testing methods and quality data and the empowerment of the network. I want to particularly thanks to Gina, the director of the BSWM as a chair of the unit, and the two vice chair, Susuin from Myanmar and Sanjay from India for their commitment and leadership for the encouragement provides for his work. Thanks also go to the land development department Thailand and Vuru of soils and water management flipping that support for the shooting of the two video of the SOP on organic carbon in black and black. Finally, I would like to express appreciation for the invaluable logistical support provided by many staff member of the unit. In the contribution in support by providing the information as need and also contribute to work as a reader in the process of the harmonization of the SOP and to be our trainers. We have come a long way. We see you giving your teachers time with your family to give that time to our activity. Please be sure that your delicate time and your value is noticed and much appreciated. Now we will move forward together to continue to improve our quality of data and also working in the same way so that our data that we have produced will benefit to the users stakeholder and for policy makers. High quality and compatible data would improve the evident best decision making in many fields, including sustainable soil management, food security and nutrition, climate adaptation and mitigation and reliable SOC stock calculations. This year, we would like to extend our work downscale to the national labs in order to provide the opportunity to the local staff to learn and improve their working. The national network will help to fix the barrier of the language problem and also provide you the opportunity for the local labs to present your challenge and needs from country level to the consideration of the coastal land. And I am pretty sure that your involvement will be even more stronger. In our side, we have provided many documents to support for this establishment and benchmarking via our coastal land webpage. And please that unit and coastal land are providing us a platform for collaboration and harmonization that is aligned to the global and international standards. The attendance of our lab managers today from all over Asia is a sign of the commitment toward achievement, a global harmonized mean of ensuring integrated in soil data and information. Finally, I wish you all a very successful meeting and actually you all the full support of myself, love as a Y share and I was the captain of the team, Rukesia, Filippo, and many others that I cannot mention here on. Thank you. Thank you very much. Can I ask everybody to please turn on their cameras and we are going to take a group picture before we officially actually start of the meeting. So please all cameras on and the big mile. Filippo tell us when you're ready. Okay, big smile please. Second I'm doing the second screen. Okay done. Thanks. Perfect. Thank you, Filippo. Now let's quickly review what we will go through today, we will start with the presentation on updates from the global laboratory network so these applies to the world network and the global level. So after we will really look into updates from Asia. So, from the CNF network and that there would also be the time to discuss about ongoing projects in the region that's linked to soil laboratories and the actually writing an application of project proposal said I would like to really tell you how to mobilize the financial resources within your country, approaching as a donor. And in one hour or so we will also talk about regional specific needs and we will close by reviewing the position of CNN closer on as we do every year, and also discussing the new governance of the network because the mandate of Dr. As a chair and the mandate of Mrs. from Myanmar and the sunshine is from, from India as vice chairs is ending this year. We need of new chair and vice chairs. So that will be basically our our day. I will, I will do the first item so let me share the presentation. So gloss on updates. So quickly recall what gloss on is about to those members of gloss on that are new to the network. So we were established in 2017 to harmonize soil laboratories data and methods and to build the capacity of laboratories in soil analysis. Ultimately, we work on three main areas of work indeed so one is quality assurance and quality control, and these bills with execution of the external quality control and training on the execution of the internal quality control. So here we also harmonize standard operating procedures. So on really methods of analysis but also other topics related to the life in the laboratory now for example health and safety. So we work on equipment. So we provide training on equipment use mountainous and purchasing, and we establish a bartering and donation system that we are kicking off so we were to figure out how to get it to work but we have it there. And under these two multi carriers we also have our sub gloss on initiative on soil spectroscopy. Ultimately last year we also established another sub network that deals with fertilizer quality assessment and this is called the info so the international network on fertilizer analysis. The gloss on operates through regional soil laboratory networks called the resonance and indeed that the, the regional network for Asia is still net and the country is that fall under this network are reported on screen. Then from the region we get to the national level in in the countries we have member laboratories and especially we have one laboratories that Gina discuss pretty well that's called the national reference laboratory. It's a laboratory appointed by the chair of actually the focal point sorry the focal point of the GS of the country to the GSB. So it's basically your legal representative at the Ministry of Agriculture usually asks to drive actions and downscale gloss on actions at the national level. These are the information updated information on the status of growth of the network as of the 12 of October. As you can see in Asia we currently have 117 member laboratories out of 740 laboratories that registered to the network globally. To learn more and to learn more about the laboratories that are registering gloss on you can, you can see them on an interactive map available on the gloss on website. Indeed, I kindly invite you to consult the gloss on website, because we do our best to keep it updated and to basically publish everything in there also frequently asked questions, so that that you can really learn more on our activities and the way we implement them. The website is available in the six UN languages we are finalizing the translation, but still you have it in English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Russian and Chinese. The same applies to the gloss on publication so these are also translated in in the six UN official languages, but also in local languages, depending on the translators that volunteer to do the job. So if you would like to translate any gloss on material in your local language, please let us know and we will guide you through the process. It's well, once that you do the translation basically all the work will be on us we will take care of all the editing and publication, so that you can really use this document to trigger activities in your country. So please let us know if you would like to become a gloss on translator and we will support you. I take this opportunity to thank all of you that already served as translators, and they're helping to downscale activities at the national level. The same applies to video we are trying to record training videos for all the material we publish. And again I would like to thank the laboratories that already volunteered to to prepare this video I'm especially referring to Thailand and Philippines because they prepared the videos on the implementation of the work the and black methods. We have a manual on how to record these videos. And again we are available to support all laboratories that wish to, to start these these activity in their laboratory this is actually also a good way to promote your laboratory because you will have space to present your and show the world that the good work you're doing. So based on the decision made at the first gloss on meeting. So in November last year, or resonance meetings with will focus on decision making only. This is a big change because usually we combine decision making with training. However, due to the Friday the trainings are being conducted actually all our meetings have been are being conducted online, and the availability of trainers gloss on decided to split these two topics so resonance meetings will be only on decision making all trainings will be in the form of webinars that will be available in different languages, and at different times so that we can really train at the same time, multiple regions that stick the same language or fall into a same time zone. So we have we created a page a webpage on capacity development so that you can be informed all times about the trainings available and ongoing. The page is still under construction but the content is updated. So what you will see on this page is a list of trainings for specifically for different thematic areas not for example what chemistry and dry chemistry and then we will have health and safety and much more. So you will have the title of the training the data and time and language of training information on the trainers and an abstract of the of the session. Before the webinar take place, you will have the details of the event and the link to register to them to the training. After the webinar is implemented that you will see have the tales of events, the presentation and the recordings of the training the webinar, so that you can access it anytime and revisit the content and and I like eventually that is basically for press releases. So these are the webinars we currently have on on the calendar in for what chemistry. The first session that you see was on awesome on the implementation of the awesome team method was implemented last week, and it was in Spanish. As I told you before the same training will also be available in English and eventually in Arabic Russian Chinese and so on. And it will be here. Well, the data still has to be confirmed but he should happen between the end of October and the beginning of November. This is the full list of trainings we have on the calendar for what chemistry so far. The webinars also spectroscopy so far have been organized only in English we started from the very basic and we are getting to more complex aspects of the matter. We already implemented five webinars and the next one will be on the 28th of October on measuring reflect on so often disturb soil surface in the field under laboratory quality. So, again, I would like to thank all experts that made the self themselves available to prepare and give webinars, indeed many webinars will be provided by laboratories in, in, in Asia. Again, I mentioned just because it comes to my mind the laboratory of Gina, so the laboratory of the chair of CNN, that will provide a lot of training. So I would like to take this opportunity to send Nina, Nina and, and hold our team for the support great support that she's providing to them to the community. And I take this opportunity also to make a call to you all to please volunteer if you feel like, and you have, you know, like to feel like become trainers of CNN and gloss around we are really looking for good experts that feel like sharing their knowledge. And eventually you can organize also something in local languages or dialect, especially for those countries that have a large population I'm thinking also about India, for example, we can really support you in the organization of these trainings for the national level for you for your country. What we are doing in terms of harmonization of standard operating procedures. Well, based on the decision made at the gloss on our meeting last year in 2020 2021 gloss on his focus on the harmonization of, of these parameters. So physical parameters, chemical parameters and ultimately we started to work on biological parameters. We are a bit behind on this work, because the network is overloaded. But we, we hope and aim to have the, the, the documents so the standard operating procedures ready and published by the end of the year. This is quite important I think for you to know, as you might have seen we made a call for laboratories to participate in a proficiency test a global proficiency test that we start, but basically in November this year. We will we have 280 set of soil samples available that are divided the basically they're organizing 10 to self sealed bags of soil labeled with a unique code. So each bag contains 10 gram of homogenize the soil material. Up to date we received 249 expressions of interest to participate in this exercise from gloss on members. And out of these 249 expression of interest eight laboratories told us that because of different reasons they cannot participate to the PT laboratories that will participate to the PT will be selected based on geographical balance. In this regard, we will make sure to involve at least one laboratory per country, which means that more than one laboratory per country can participate if samples are available. Then the number of parameters in a list that we provided that interested laboratories can can measure the method of analysis in the least based on a list that we provided that in the interested laboratories can perform. And then the principle that first come first serve, but in this case we have more samples than more sample than laboratories that wish to do the analysis of these. We don't see these criteria to get in place but let's see the decisions on the laboratories to participate in the PT will be made by the end of this month so by the end of October and the shipment of the samples will will happen in November. So participate or participating laboratories will be notified them upon the well the outcome of their application. And the ones that ultimately will participate in the PT will be asked to analyze so samples for organic carbon available phosphorus and total nitrogen in this order of priority. We will not ask to do any replication of the analysis or sample should be analyzed only once and the very important laboratories should not use the soil material so you I told you you will receive a 10 bags of 10 grams of soil each. You should not use these 10 grams to do one analysis only. You should perform all the analysis in these regard we are we in the instructions that we will send together with the samples. We will give you an idea now of the recommended amount of soil to use for each analysis based on the gloss on SOP. So in this regard that we kindly ask you to decide what analysis to perform before starting to do the analysis. And to make very well your calculations because for example he this is an example you might decide to analyze carbon by the most available phosphorus by your son and also by Bray one and total nitrogen back shoulder. This is fine because the amount of soil you would need based on the information in the gross on SOP is 10 ground. Otherwise, if you decide to also perform the analysis by walking and black. You will not have enough soil because this would require 11 grams of soil. So please plan very well the way you did the analysis, you will conduct before starting to process soil. All results should be submitted through an online platform that we created. And in this regard that it's not that everybody can have access to these to these platform and can submit results only participating laboratories will be able to log into the platform because they will receive a unique identification code. Some updates on the gloss on procurement to close this presentation. Well, laboratories from developing countries that participated to the gloss on PT in 2019 and demonstrating not to need of any training. We're granting with some laboratory equipment based on their needs. Ultimately, ultimately in Asia gloss on provided or is still provide delivery equipment to India, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines. Information on the equipment provided to laboratories are available on the gloss on website. Again, we have a page dedicated to equipment with an interactive map, in which you can see the benefit the name of the beneficiary country and the beneficiary laboratory or why they're receiving the equipment. So in this case, for example, their participation to the gloss on PT in 2019. Then the address of the laboratory, the equipment that was donated the donor and the status of delivery. So in the case of the Philippines, for example, the equipment was delivered. So thank you for your attention. I don't know if you have any question you can please either raise your hand or write your questions in the in the chapter and either me or Philip or the presenter will answer it. And I will answer the question in the chat as you write them now because we are late on the agenda already I would like to give the floor to Philip for for moderating the second session I believe I'm going by memory. Yes, no. Yes, yes. Yes, Philip for the floor is yours. Thanks look at second you see my screen. Yeah. Okay. I also like to welcome everybody to this fifth meeting of the Asian Celebratory Network for those who don't know me. I'm Philip Benedetti. I'm working at the GSB secretariat and I'm supporting Lucrezia with implementation of the activities of the gloss on and all the regional networks. I would like to recall very briefly what Lucrezia already mentioned on the growth on the of the global network of gluson as you can see from these graphs. Since two years ago, the network almost doubled its size. And we are now reaching almost 800 soil laboratories from all over the world as members of the of this network. And as you can see from the right graph, still net so the laboratories from the Asian region is like is the one of the biggest group in the in the in the in the in the world, together with those from Latin America, Europe and Africa. Indeed, even the members from Asian countries at growth at growth in the last year, and since the last select meeting in 2020, we are we register 57 new laboratories within the network. Of course, we would like to continue growing so we encourage you to. We kindly ask you to encourage others to laboratories operating within your country to register in the network to be updated and informed about our activities and to be involved in our activities. In this regard, I would like to stress that there are few countries in which we don't have any lab registered. In Asia, we have a few countries in which we don't have lab registering gluson. Maybe that these countries don't have enough lab, but we think some of them have so if you have, we are trying to working with the GSP focal points and representatives in the country to have members registered in any gluson from the country listed in the upper list. But if you have any partners or colleagues working in these five countries, please let us know and encourage them to register. While as Lucas mentioned, also Gina mentioned, we each country has a national reference laboratory who is which is in charge of implementing glusonal activities within the country. And all of you, all of your countries have it just Afghanistan doesn't have it yet, but indeed it's in this case we are working closely with the GSP focal point trying to dominate someone to have a reference lab to contact in the country to implement activities. In my presentation, I would like to briefly recall what I really present last year on the national networks. Also, Dr. Gina, the signature stress very well this point. As you know, gluson is organized in regional networks, but we would like to move forward and scale down more the global activities to the local context. This is why we are trying to encourage countries to establish the national soil laboratory networks, also called Nazolin. Why because we would like to improve this is a powerful way. Maybe the main way to improve the gluson activities in the local context, develop programs and activities that can better face the local needs of so laboratories in each country. And of course, reach a larger number of laboratories so the network can grow and we can have more labs inside because again more labs we are we are we have in the network. More knowledge is shared where activities can be implemented. So this is very important for us to reach more countries and thanks for your support we can encourage other institutions in your country to join the network. Very briefly, I would like to recall what are the tasks of the nasolans. So indeed as I just mentioned, we want you to motivate the other laboratories to register in the network. The national network should facilitate the implementation of gluson activities to the to the national context within the country. Advertise all the activities, all these events, all the training opportunities, all the initiatives that gluson organize to the country laboratories and encourage them to join them. Indeed, we would like you to organize training within the national networks. In order to transfer the knowledge that some of you are getting from this to the global training or the resulant meeting, where we talk about different topics is important this knowledge that you acquire during this meeting are then transferred to the other soil laboratories operating in your country and this can be done during the nasolans meetings and nasolans meetings of course is the best way to talk among you colleagues operating in the same country. As you can see from the image here, colleagues in Philippines are doing this on a regular basis. So they're discussed about common challenging and needs, and they think about how to implement a work plan, what to do to improve the condition of soil laboratories within the country. And this is being done in many other countries in the region and should be taken as an example from this country that didn't start the activities of the national networks yet. So when you talk together then you can support each other, developing project proposals to mobilize and to get financial resources that can be used to implement the activities that you that you think are important to tackle and to face the issues of your network. And nasolans also once you meet, once you discuss, you can even organize together a proficiency test APT within your country. Of course more, more without scale APT from the global to the national context more laboratories can join because then we can share the samples among a larger number of labs from the same country. It's important that nasolans implement and organize and implement pts within the country. It's important and the nasolans communicate with the chair and vice chair of the seal net the chair and the vice chair of gloss on the gsp focal point of your country. And of course with me and Lucrezia and the other advisors of gloss on so we can help you support your new activities and you can come back to us with your main needs and particularly issues that you can get to my face. And we also like to ask you as once you create your nasolans to let us know all the activities that you implement all the needs that you have so we can keep updated a webpage that now I will show you. And that is like a good spot to highlight your your case what you need what you who you are what you're doing. And don't forget that we are here to support you so whatever need you have whatever issue you may have with international networks, we are here to support you. So do not hesitate to ask for support to gloss on. As I just mentioned we have these web pages on the National Celebratory Networks under the gloss on webpage. When you can select the name of the country that you are interested in for the national networks, and you will see another you will get a review of the national network of that country. We also published two very important documents that have been translated in several languages but as look at summation, if you want we can translate them into your local language as well with your support that is the terms of reference of the National Celebratory Network, which summarize all the tasks and activities that should be implemented by the nasolans and some guidelines on how to establish the nasolans with very good case studies from different countries of the world that share the the experience they need that they face the issues that they face that may help you to overcome the problems that you may face yourself as well. Within the still next region we have different different situations with countries where the nasolans has not been established yet because you have like low number of laboratories, there are communication problems, there is not enough knowledge on how to establish this network or is a strong need for finance services to kick off the first meeting and activities. But again, please do not forget that we are here to help you. This means that we can really support you in implementing the nasolans activities especially regarding the first meeting of the network. We are here to communicate with all the labs in your country, meet together. Now we have this powerful tool of virtual meetings and we can meet all together online easily with no costs. So we can start, you can start discussing within your country among peers, among other celebrities and start sharing what are your experience, your knowledge, your needs in order to start thinking on how to take all these needs. There are some other countries that are currently establishing Solaboratory Networks and other countries that already established Solaboratory Networks and National Networks and I can ask them to give us regular updates. I know some of you just wrote us in the last days, in the last two weeks. We are terribly overloaded now with the regional networks, but I will update all the web pages of your country very soon in the upcoming days. But as soon as you have any activities that is a meeting, a training that you organize within your country, any pictures that you make during the meeting, please send this material to us and we can keep your web page updated. And I also would like to encourage all the laboratories within the nasoland to become members of the glossary so we can be, we can directly involve them in the global activities and also of course in the regional activities. So I would like to thank you for your attention. I'm sorry if I was very fast in this, but we don't have much time, but all the information are on the website and can be easily found there. And also please don't hesitate to write me and Lucrezia for any questions about these national networks. You can even use the chat. I'm here to answer your questions. And now I would like to move forward and present a few colleagues at the GSB who will present different activities of the global partnership that are related to the activities of soil laboratories. So, I will like to give the floor to my colleagues about the soil doctors program should be Sylvia Carolina, who will present I think I see Carolina. Are you okay. Please let me introduce you, Mrs. Carolina Rivera from GSB who will present to the activities of the global soil doctor programs. Thanks Carolina for being with us and the floor is yours. Thank you, Phillipo. And thanks to all CLNET for this invitation. I'm glad to present here the soil doctors program implementation, the implementation activities that we had in the recent times. So just a reminder for those who don't know the soil doctors program. The soil doctors program is a farmer to farmer training to achieve this implementation of soil doctors in all the countries to disseminate sustainable soil management. The organization of the soil doctors program is all around a promoter at the country level and the interactions of a network at the national level around these activities of soil doctors who are the farmers experts in sustainable soil management. We had our activities initiated by a questionnaire and this questionnaire was answered by all the regions, specifically the main interest in Asia, as you see also in Africa and Latin America. So from there we could start from the to know better know the interest of the countries on the program. All the implementation activities that we have in this moment are here. There are some pilot countries and some pilot implementations in several regions. We have in Kazakhstan and in Asia we have two specific implementations one in Bangladesh in the framework of the soil for nutrition project from the GSB. And we have a specific module on soils for nutrition. The promoter identified is the soil research institute, the SRDI and the extension services, the DAE. And another project in formulation by Thailand in all the Lakan and Mekong basin. So this project is ongoing. Other pilots ongoing on Burkina Faso, Malawi, Gambia and Nigeria in Africa and also in Mexico and Colombia, Latin America. So we are starting with all these these trainings of trainers and some specific topics depending on the context of the country. We, in our websites, you can find all the posters from the program and we are proceeding to the translations of these posters. We need to translate these posters sometimes not only at the country level, but also at the regional level because we need to reach the farmers. So in some countries we need to translate that to the really local languages like here, for example, in Africa, you see the language Chichewa from Malawi or in Kazakhstan, also for Kazakhstan, so we are proceeding with all these translations. And regarding soil laboratories, what we are doing here related to analysis or to laboratories is not very important, but to explain what we are doing is a soil educational kit. The objective of these kits is not to analyze soils, but is more to educate farmers about soils, what are soils and is more a qualitative assessment of soil. What we are including in these kits we are going to see is very simple, some physical properties like texture, organic matter, infiltration tests, the soil structure, the aggregate stability, so these are all things that you can do in the field in a very simple way. Some chemical properties like the soil pH or carbonates with some simple reagents and biological properties like the literate, the composition, the observation of invertebrates or the observation of roots. All these are very simple things that you can do in the field. So we are creating this soil educational kits. In some cases we expect to work with reagents, but this would need the collaboration with the National Laboratory because we cannot send from Rome these reagents, we should collaborate directly with the laboratories in the countries. We could use sometimes like some mild IACs for to analyze carbonates, hydrogen peroxide just to observe the oxides of organic matter, sodium fluoride to detect alofants or some pH universal reagents or other specific reagents. In the moment in the kit we have some strips for the pH and we are also talking, we had the proposal from Thailand from the Land Development Department of Thailand to have the pH kit proposed by DLDD. And we are talking with Thailand with the possibility to include this kit in our soil kit that Thailand should provide us. So also in some countries we are using very simple kits like for example to use baking soda and vinegar to detect some extreme pH observations or something like that. As you see the pH, the soil kits from the soil doctors program are very simple and this is what we want to do in the field just to pitch the farmers on how to observe soils. So the way forward with the regional laboratories networks is that the GSB can provide the containers in some cases and the local laboratories can provide the reagents. This could be the arrangement that we can have locally to have these reagents but for the moment we don't have any examples of that ongoing. We are just starting the trainings of the trainers. If possible also the program promotes soil laboratory analysis for specific soil assessments. We prefer to promote soil analysis in a laboratory than to do some very not precise tests in the field. So in some cases we recommend to go to the soil laboratory to do the analysis. Also what we want to do in collaboration is to develop soil doctors posters for soil laboratory analysis in some specific objectives. For example, what's to analyze in soils perhaps not only the standard analysis that sometimes we do but also some physical or biological analysis that can be done in the laboratory and how to identify this analysis and how to do it, how to ask for a laboratory for that. And also another poster on how to interpret a soil analysis. We have this request from many farmers, many farmers ask us for this information on how to interpret soil analysis. So we think that this can be a good collaboration also with the laboratories network. And while some additional information to develop that can be done also in collaboration with laboratories like for example which are the crop requirements. Laboratories sometimes have this information and we can transmit it to the farmers. How to identify the efficiency symptoms and all this kind of information. So the way forward is also all the ideas that you can have from the laboratories that you can receive from the farmers asking you for analysis. We can develop it together and we are open to working together with the with the laboratory network. Thanks a lot for your attention and here you have my email in case of any question. Thank you very much. Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot Carolina for your presentation of your participation to the meeting. I think he was very informative and very useful for the labs. I will like to give the floor to my colleague Yusuf Igini from the GSP Secretariat. We'll briefly talk about the GSP activities on soil mapping and the relation with soil laboratories. Thanks Yusuf for being here and the floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you Filippo. So I will not be talking about only mapping but also about the other things and I will try to make some like concrete connections between glossol and INSI. I have just few slides not more than two or three. Let me put them on the screen. Is it visible? Do you see the screen? Not yet. Let me try it again. I think it gives me some errors but I don't know what is it. You want me to share the screen? I will start talking and in the meanwhile I will send you the slides that maybe you can put on the screen. Sure. Thanks. Okay, let me... Okay, I send you Filippo. Okay, let me start in the meanwhile that when you receive my presentation it's just three slides and you will put on the screen. I'm here representing the mapping group. People call us mapping group but we are not only mapping, we are doing much more at GSB. We can say the soil information and data, whatever activity, relevant to soil information and data, it comes under pillar four. It was called pillar four and now GSB is moving from pillar structure to like more action oriented structure. It will be soil information and data from now on. Ah, you received it already. That's nice. Okay, I want to say something about INSEE first. INSEE is an international network of soil information institutions. It's an official network. I say official because all the soil information institutions, national soil information institutions were appointed by the national focal points. So it was established in 2015. And INSEE is mandated to build glosses. Glosses is the umbrella term for many, many of many, many products. We are developing a global soil information system, which is called glosses. And under glosses, we have global data products. All global data products are country driven. Country driven means the countries are producing the national data sets, national maps, national data products, and we are compiling them into global ones. And we launch as global maps like GSOP map. We launched in 2017, global soil and carbon map. Now we are launching today during the global soil affected soil symposium. The GSAS map, the global soil affected soils map, we launched GSOPSEC, the global soil organic carbon sequestration potential map. And we will be launching many others in the coming years. So glosses is not only information system, but is a system of products, a system of systems. We are developing national soil information systems, a global soil information system systems, national data products and global data products that harmonize global data products. What INSEE does, INSEE is mandated to produce and develop these systems, services and data products. What are they, data products I already mentioned, those global, country driven global data products. INSEE is developing, each INSEE institution is developing the soil information system. They're also collaborating with us and contributing to the glosses, the global soil information system. So glosses is system of systems as a federated global soil information system. We'll be connecting national soil information systems and we'll be serving harmonized quality SS quality check data. So why I'm here today, I want to make some like concrete connections between INSEE and glossola because we have been trying to do that since the establishment of glossola. Because glossola is too much, it's the best candidate to improve and to make the things better for data and the system development. So what INSEE does, INSEE gets the mandate from the GSB Plenary Assembly. What is the mandate? Okay, we need to produce a global data set. What is it, global soil organic carbon map? INSEE is mandated to develop a national global, national soil organic carbon map. What they need? They need to compile data. What is this data? Data is ground data in the first place. We need measured data. All INSEE institution needs measured data. It should be fresh, harmonized and quality SS quality checked. These are the musts of the process. So what we were missing? We were missing data in the first place because INSEE institutions, they are appointed by the national focal point. They have their own procedures, they have their own databases, they have their own ways to implement certain activities. The challenge here is insufficient data. I say insufficient because INSEE institutions, they have their own data sources. They are not very well connected with other soil information institutions or other institutions in the country. And another big challenge is fresh data. Fresh data is a must because it's a big pain when we try to produce a quality national soil data and national soil data sets. Fresh data is a must for example, soil organic carbon. A carbon is subject to change every some years because of land management and because of practices, because of land degradation or many other reasons. So fresh data is a must. For example, soil organic carbon map, the global soil organic carbon map, countries produce their national soil organic carbon maps using data sometimes coming from 70s, 60s, 80s for example. Because they didn't have access to access to fresh data. Who is who is holding and holding the fresh data now is Glossalon members because Glossalon has more than one laboratories in the countries and most of them are like producing fresh data. And as a challenge here is harmonized data. When I say harmonization, harmonization is the key for key process element for developing any kind of data product here. Harmonized data like harmonizing units. For example, now we are launching today Jesus map, a global soil, salt affected soils map. The challenge behind was quite frustrating because we started in 2019 with Jesus map. But we saw that there's a big challenge behind the measured data because we saw that almost like all countries using different approaches to measure EC to measure pH. When we are talking about EC electrical conductivity, the countries are using one to one, one to 2.5, one to five, one to 10 soil water suspension, for example. So it was a challenge to convert one into another. Because we want to build a global product, a product to develop a global product, produce a global product, harmonize global data product. And that's the challenge behind that, that harmonization that we needed to harmonize data in the first place the measure of data to have a harmonize and good looking and nice global data product. It's, it sounds easy, but it's difficult to harmonize the common one into another one to one water soil suspension into one to 10 soil water suspension. So also units were quite difficult because the Soviet school like old Soviet countries they were using a procedure which was adopted by by Soviet times, the Soviet school. Then other countries, the European countries and countries in America, they were using a different approaches. So it was also a challenge. So harmonizing, harmonize data was also quite a big challenge for us. And quality assess quality check data, and those are the steps in here that they started working in this, like bringing SOPs. It was quite a big step forward for quality assess quality check data, because it was aiming to standardize the procedures, then bringing like some quality assess quality check data. So what I see here is compiling data, compiling data from the institution, from their own sources, but they had kind of disconnected with Glossalon. Glossalon at national level, Glossalon at regional level and Glossalon at global level. So, could you, could you go to the next slide please, Filippo. So what I what I see here in the first place because this is the first time we discuss the interaction between NC and Glossalon almost the first time. So what we can, how we can help Glossalon to implement their own activities, so we can help Glossalon to develop their own structure, infrastructure for storing, serving and exchanging soil, soil lab information and spectral, spectral services. Spectral services here I'm talking about spectral libraries, national spectral libraries and national estimation services because spectroscopy is much more than important than than before now we are implementing many activities in in spectral domain I will say. So what we foresee is we want to do is we want to have countries to build their own spectral services to be part of or to be connected to Glossalon, the global soil information system. So we can help for, help with the developing these infrastructures because infrastructure development is quite, quite a business. It's quite complicated. It's, it's, it's very much demanding in terms of technical expertise because it means deep technical expertise in infrastructure development. So we can help Glossalon, we can help implement the harmonization of data using results of Glossalon, we can demand something like, okay, NC is developing this, why we are developing some data sets, soil organic carbon, soil compaction, soil pollution, whatever. So we can ask Glossalon, could you please help us to to harmonize these information is data in the first place. And how we can help Glossalon the these laboratories we can help on capacity building data processing storing mapping and modeling. For example, people could you go to the next one. So Glossalon can help NC. Okay. And the first place was a big challenge the fresh measure data quality assess quality check data and harmonize data. These are these, these are all under under under Glossalon and Glossalon is the first and best candidate to provide the best quality data to NC. And with harmonize and quality assess quality checked. And then fresh data, fresh data here also additional data because I said that the country, the institutions that are using data, they own on from their own sources, own sources. And they're not, they're not, they're not complete, they're incomplete, because the data around hold by several other institutions in the country or laboratories, which are not available to NC. Would you please go to the next slide. Yeah, the question here is how we can work together at regional at national and at the global level. So what what will be the solution is we need to, we might need to compose joint working with Glossalon in see working group that they can. They can be represented in in each network that the NC can have a chair in in Glossalon Glossalon can have a chair in NC they can, they can, they can also attend the in the annual technical meetings for example. But this needs more development more discussion and deep discussion actually before before going ahead. And the question here is how we can connect Glossalon and NC at global regional and national now now we are in in ceiling meeting. We can discuss how we can connect this this this these two technical networks very technical networks and make them working together. So these are my questions, if the, if it sounds good if you can be joined working at regional level also then at global level to to make the things better to make the concretize the connection between Glossalon and NC. I think it was the last slide. Yeah. Yes, yes, thanks a lot you Suf. Yeah, I will be happy to answer any questions about it was so brief. Okay. Yeah, we'll put the link to the web page on the chat. This is a comment from the Glossalon chair in the chat so maybe you can have a look at it. See some even positive feedbacks on this. Normally with now we should. I don't see a question but comments. Yeah, some comments. So in short, we need Glossalon. I say we, we is in see here in Tennessee network of soil information institutions. We really need to make them working together, because data is is born in those laboratories and we need those data. And those data is not all is that is that is that easy. This data sharing IP the property rights. But I think we can find a solution because we are sitting in a, like a perfect, we are in a perfect position as Glossalon and NC we can enforce and encourage countries and laboratories to start working together. And our data policy, we can put Glossalon and NC together in the data policy, we can, we can find ways and ways to make this informational data exchange possible. My suggestion is that we share information on the current members of the country with the Glossalon network. So that laboratories in specific countries can connect to their representative in NC and and then we follow up in a country country specific manner, the discussion. Yeah, it sounds good. Because the Glossalon Glossalon, the next session of Glossalon is in November, right? Yeah, at the end of November. NC is also NC, next NC meeting seven NC session is in the first and second week of November. Have you already have a slot for Glossalon to start discussing to make to materialize this connection in a better way. To open a discussion or to trigger something. I think it will be good also to have a slot in the Glossalon meeting to make NC more visible or inviting someone from the beautiful working group to make these connections like possible. Okay, so we have the slot on NC and the next Glossalon meeting and meanwhile we send to the regions. So in this case to Asia, the information on the representative in NC. Yeah, whatever we did do at global level, it should be, it should be done also at regional level because this is crucial for for the implementation. So I don't know if participants have additional suggestions on how we could basically strengthen data quality mapping production. If you have any suggestion, please write it in the chat. I don't see any. Otherwise we follow up by email. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you a lot. And to thank also Carolina for being with us. Oh, so so wants to say something to please the floor is yours. So so would you like to add something. No. Okay, so thanks a lot Carolina and thanks a lot user for being with us. I will now share my screen because again on the item to I also would like to tell you something. This is about financial resource mobilization. So let me share my screen. So financial resource mobilization and project proposal right writing. So, as you might know, gloss on is a self financial initiatives, which means that no funds are located to its implementation come from the FAO or financial resources that we use to implement gloss on activities come from projects granted to the global partnership. So as a result, most of our activities are global. We also implement global activities in gloss on, and this is because the GSP has very few projects on soil laboratory in specific regions. For example, we have one in the near Eastern North Africa, or at the country level we have a project especially in in Africa. So gloss on members are kindly invited to make an effort to mobilize financial resources for the implementation of national and regional activities. And the Philippa and myself as gloss on coordinators can help you in preparing the concept notes and submit submit them to donors because we are very experiencing project proposal writing. When you try to approach as always a donor because still you can approach as always a donor. So your request to not be submitted to the global soil partnership, we can just help you and facilitate the process, but the GSP will not give you money. Okay, money will be given eventually by FAO. So you can approach FAO as a donor by asking for a technical cooperation project program project example of TCP projects that relates to gloss on activities and that actually were granted by FAO to the GSP and countries. For example, a regional TCP for the near Eastern North Africa that I wrote together with the national focal points for the region in 2019, and ultimately it was granted in October 2020. And in this case we're providing training to the national reference laboratories in 12 countries with a budget of $400,000. Another example of projects that relates to soil laboratories is a national one that we're currently implementing in Iberia. Again, in this case I coordinate in the writing of the concept notes and we are training and providing equipment to two soil laboratories in the country with a budget of $440,000. I'm telling you this to tell you that these are funds that you can have access to and we are here to help you to get these funds. But how would you, could you apply for such a project? Well, first of all, you need to have a clear idea of what you want in terms of activities and what is your final objective. The gloss on this, the gloss on coordinator but also the gloss on chair and the seal net chair and vice chairs can support you on this in formulating your request and making a real assessment of your needs if in case your need of help. The second step and it's the most important one that really determine whether you will get the funds or not is to ask your government, usually the Ministry of Agriculture to send an official letter requesting for a TCP project to your country office. If you are applying for a national TCP or to the regional power office, if you want to have a project with other countries in the region. So the letter should mention the problem or challenge faced by your country. And basically, in there, there should be a request now for getting such a project so the request for a TCP project with a note on how this project will help to tackle the problem or challenge. My request, my request to you is to please put in copy the gloss on coordinator that in the case of Asia also correspond to the coordinator of the Asian soil partnership. This is me so that I can do an internal follow up at FAO with either your country office or your regional office. And then as a third step, there is the preparation of the project document. This is a document that you cannot prepare by yourself because there is a template to to use, and there are sections that you cannot complete if you do not work at FAO. In this case, I will help you in this case to prepare the document and to submit it through the FAO country original office. Once we receive the confirmation that the project is approved, we can start the implementation. Some additional information on the TCP is in this case is that these projects are signed by FAO every two years. And now, like this year, there is the end of the biennium. So it's a very good time to ask for funds. This is a think about what I'm just telling you and the contact me by email and let's start the discussion with your country original office and submit a project proposal because this is a good time for you to get funds. TCP projects provide maximum $500,000, either if they are national or regional that the maximum budget you could get. However, they can be used to kick off activities, assess needs, and especially write a second phase project proposal. This means that you can get $500,000 to really kick off activities and initiate something in your country, and then apply for a second project of $500,000 maximum. Again, that will allow you to complete the activity. Okay, so first two years activities with the $500,000 and we apply for another project that will allow you to conclude the activity. The implementation time of the project is usually one, one and a half year. Okay, so if we write it now, maybe we start in 2022 issue then in 2023 or maximum by half of the middle of 2024. This was my last slide. I strongly encourage you again to think about what you would like to implement in your country. Activities cannot be laboratory specific. It should be national. Okay, so you should eventually write a project that will be implemented in more than one laboratory. Okay, then contact me also for form formulating your idea. And start thinking about contacting your government for preparing the official letter. Okay, this is the most important thing to do at the moment. Please follow up with me by email. Okay. I don't know if there is any question. I'm opening the chat. If you have any question, please write to me in the chat. Okay. Filippo, I give you back at the floor so that you can move forward with item. Yes, thanks a lot. We'll now move to the next item, when we will discuss some of the main needs of the region and some activities that may be implemented within the region. To be aware, we launched a survey before the silnet meeting that we were asking you to submit it. And this was about the main needs of the Asian celebrity network. Yeah, we would like to thank the 38. Thank you for answering the survey. And I want to briefly recap why we launched this survey. This was important for us because we would have a better review of the main needs of the region. This is also an easy way to get information. And we like to use this information that we retrieved to kick off the discussion on on on the keys to implement within the region. So we also have a clear overview of what are the priorities within the region. The survey was answered mainly by public and governmental laboratories from university as well. And we also ask if laboratories were in touch with the regional chair and vice chair. And say alpha you say yes or say no. So we will, we would like to find a way to strengthen the connection between the silnet chair and vice chair and all the laboratories within the, within the region, maybe through maybe through the support of the national reference labs. But we will discuss about this later during the governance. We'll make some proposal on this in this regard. I also, we will, we're also wondering whether this was the if some of you really attend some silnet meeting of this was the first one. Yes, let's say, you know, many of you joined the restaurant meeting and we're informed about all the activities of gloss on directly by Lugrescia or by Lugrescia or me. So as those are coordinators, but still, some of you receive communication from the national reference labs and the chair and the vice chair of the silnet. Why we ask this because in again, we would like to strengthen the communication within the network and be sure that the gloss on activities are implemented in the countries and then laboratories are aware of all the activities implemented by gloss on trainings, it is as would be harmonization and so on. So, most of you already joined previous silnet meeting and most of you said that it was a useful experience because it's a good way to share the knowledge and to to be trained in the last edition. So this in the meeting we also include some training session during the meeting this year, as Lugrescia mentioned, we split this session so we have now just decision making while training session will be implemented in a difference in separate sessions. So again, please remember that on Monday, on Tuesday, a training session on health and safety will take place. And now I will put the link in the chat and I highly encourage you to to register to it. The session will be implemented in English. Of course, Resolan are a good way to implement the TFDs in the region. And we were deeply investigated why, I mean like about the PT, proficiency test, we were wondering whether you already joined a PT in the past or not. Most of you already joined the PT, 61% of respondents laboratories joined the PT already. And as you can see from the right graph, we, there are different type of PT organizers that's like in which laboratories were involved. So some of you joined the silnet and the gluson PTs of 2018 and 2019, while some others joined PTs organized in the international level by other organization like us back or with all. And some of you organize already already involved list in the PTs implemented the national level. And this is very important because as we mentioned already, or implementing PTs at the national level is very important because we can have more laboratories joining the exercise. We were wondering about the main needs of the of the laboratories in the region in order to prioritize silnet and gluson activities and work plan. And it seems that one of the main needs regards the training of laboratory staff members. In this regard, as I just said, we are implementing online training session. So I highly encourage you to have a look to the capacity development webpage on gluson website, well information of all the webinars on laboratory training are reported. Also, many of you stated that the main need regard the organization of SOPs of the standard operating procedures. And again, gluson is doing his best to to harmonize many SOPs on different type of parameters so chemical biological and physical every year. And we will discuss about this later on as well. And some of you also stressed the importance of adopt more both more sustainable and more modern methods for soil analysis. And that will reduce the risk for human health and environmental risk for disposal of the reagents and methods that take into account the new cutting edge technologies, technologies such as science petroscopy for instance. And also in this regard we are implementing training session on science petroscopy. So please again have a look on the website of gluson. And also, quality control is one of the main issues, but almost on all these topics we are trying to develop work plan and activities in these regards. So we'll keep you updated on this and again please have a look at our website. Regarding the trainings we would like to, we ask which topics should be prioritized in the region. So we ask participants to let us know which topic there will be, which topics there will be more interest or more in need. So this was the highest demand in terms of training. And again, several webinars on different SOPs and the measurement tools for parameters will be implemented very soon. So quality control health and safety see many other topics were requested by laboratories and we will try to do our best to implement webinars on this session on these topics. Lastly, we were wondering, we were trying to investigate the support and the level of awareness that local and regional governments have and provide to so laboratories. So first we would like to, we were wondering if you think that national governments are aware of the key role played by so laboratories in providing good quality soil data. And most of you said that they are kind of aware, but we need to better inform them. So in this regard, we'll try to work, we'll try to work on preparing some informative material such as polyfeed brief on on so laboratories or other informative material of the rule on the role of so laboratories. You can use such material to inform your government on the role played by your laboratory and even trying to mobilize and get some financial resources to improve your laboratory in terms of infrastructure in terms of equipment, consumables, training opportunity, stuff, in order to improve basically your capacity. So by the idea is that by informing your government about the activities and the importance of the activities that you do, that you implement, they may support you more. And also we were like to, we were wondering which kind of support about the governments already provide you. And mostly, we found out that mostly governments provide a laboratory with technical support. So keep in mind consumables and so while really economic support in terms of having personnel organizing that like allocating resources that allow, allows laboratory to implement and organize activities such as trainings, and indeed having new personnel is not really well diffused. So hopefully by informing governments on on the soil laboratories work, we may find new ways to get financial resources and financial support to laboratories. And lastly we asked if you think that CNET and and then also gloss on should facilitate the communication between the soil laboratories and the governments. And most of you said yes, others say maybe somewhere I'm sure about this. In this regard, again, just as just as I just mentioned, Gluson and CNET will try to work on some informative material and and is always we are always ready to and and available to support you to communicate with your GSP focal point and the government to in case you need any support from them. So this was my last slide to introduce this topic regarding soil laboratory needs. And now we should. I would like to give the floor to Christian but I don't know if I want to discuss first about the work plan. Otherwise, I will give the floor to to Christian Artman, who is a Gluson advisors from higher difference. Most of you know him. If you can go on to talk or we can give the floor to Christian first. So I will give the floor to Christian Artman. Thanks again Christian and the floor is yours. Thank you very much. Thank you, please. Okay. So, let me find the presentation. Sorry. Why it's not opened. Let me. Sorry. I would just have a look, open the PPT and try to share again. It seems they have a program cannot find it. It's opened on my. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah, we can see it now. Yes, please go ahead. Okay, is it full screen for you? Yeah, we have the screen divided in different section, but yes, we can. Okay, so perhaps it's wrong. I selected the wrong one. Okay, I don't know. Okay, excellent. So, yeah, I'm very happy to be here today and see many people that I have met in real life. I hope next year we'll be able to meet again and work together and enjoy not only the meeting but also after the meeting and before the meetings. So what I'm presenting now is things related to interlaboratory proficiency testing. Okay. You have been presented many documents that are made available for you, the SOPs, the standard operating procedures, the video booklet for recommendations, all this is made for you to work exactly in the same way and provide comparable results. But how can you be sure that you perform correctly. If you perform, your results are really comparable. So there is only one way to be sure of this is to participate to interlaboratory proficiency testing to check by yourself your performance comparing to the others. I think in for Cilnet, many of you, if not most of you have already been involved in such an interlaboratory comparison two years ago. And you know what it is. And if we had this first PT, it was just a start. Now we need a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth, etc. interlaboratory comparison, this has to be done on a regular basis. And to do this, we need PT providers. For PT providers, this needs not only to be motivated laboratories but also skilled laboratories. And in fact, such comparison have very for the for the PT providers has very limited cost, but you need some specific instrument, very cheap, but I will show after. And everybody every lab can learn about how to be to produce such samples that can be used for interlaboratory comparison. Even every lab should already do it for its internal quality control. And on the Glossoland website, there is a document that is available that is the basic guidelines for preparing a sample for internal quality control. But most of you, even all of you, all the labs should already use this document to prepare their own quality control samples, and it can be used to prepare the intellect the samples that can be used for interlaboratory comparison. So this is the outlines of that document, I will show you the different aspect quickly and the instruments that has to be used. So, the first step is the sample preparation process. Of course, you have to collect samples, and you have to make an initial drying to be able to make this aggregation, and also screening or saving the samples perhaps a second drying will be necessary. And after this milling, milling also, and this is why you need to collect, let's say 20 to 50 kilos of samples, and you must be able to manage such amount of sample to dry it, see it, etc. And after this in the sample preparation, there is homogenization. This is, for example, the instrument that have been used for the samples that you will receive in November for the PT about focusing on carbon that have been mentioned by Lucretia. And you see this is a barrel, and you see this was organized by the British Geological Survey, and even them, they made it with a very simple tool that I think can be produced in most of the countries of your countries. After this, you need to subdivide that big amount of soil to make, to prepare some smaller samples, sub-samples, and each sub-sample must be similar to the other one. So there is a specific instrument that you see here on the picture, but we can provide you with a document to produce it in your country also that is extremely cheap. When you have prepared all these sub-samples, you have to analyze them, take some of them and analyze one parameter to check the homogeneity. This is homogeneity assessment, and you have to make a statistical test, but very easy, very simple also. After this, a time consuming part of the work is packaging and labeling all these samples. So this can be done by hand as you see on the picture on the left, or you can have some instruments that you see on the back with the button and the work is made automatically. But even by hand, it's more time consuming, but it can easily be made. Labeling and packaging need also some instruments to seal the plastic bags and to paste and to prepare to print the labels in a standard way, but this is very, very easy. The last step will be the storage. Of course, you have to prepare it and to store until you are able to send it and you cannot necessarily prepare the sample immediately before the PT. So perhaps you have to store those plastic bags and think about a room with a stable temperature and so on. One very important aspect is of course the confidentiality of about the samples you are using and sending to everybody. Your staff yourself and your staff, of course, must keep absolutely secret the characteristics of the sample that have that you are sending to the overlaps. This is a key point. And so, to organize such interlaboratory proficiency testing, we need PT providers and the discussion that we can have even if only quickly now after reminding you what need to be done is to know which laboratories can be volunteer to do the job and organize HPT already in 2022. And so I let now Filippo and Lucretia and knock manage the discussion between you, but thank you very much for the lab who will volunteer. Thanks for your attention. Okay, thanks a lot. Thanks a lot, Christian. Yeah. So I don't know if you, Filippo Lucretia knock you want to discuss now and to identify volunteer labs or if you want to keep the discussion for later. Let's ask the audience, is there any volunteer for the preparation and organization of an issue of regional PT. We know that Thailand already did it in 2018, a long time ago. Is there any other volunteer. Maybe India. What about India Ashok are you with us because you are hopefully soon receiving the equipment that should help you preparing the samples now for the organization of at least a national PT. What do you think about maybe leading the organization of the regional PT. Lucretia can I comment. Ashok is not here. He's busy in some meeting today. So yeah that's okay we are also trying to develop procedures standardized the procedure is still not reached to the final point. We have received the equipment just now and yet to be installed of course that is of course to be used at the final stage only. The most important thing here is that there is one ISO requirement also ISO 17043 that gives a I mean for proficiency testing providers. There is an ISO requirement and there is an NABL that certifies that gives a certificate to laboratories that provide proficiency testing. So we are preparing ourselves for that also. But I think it will take some time for us. Of course it is not essential it's not an essential requirement to conduct PT program to get ISO certificate, but it is better if we also have that kind of certificate because it gives a psychological edge to the participating laboratories that the certificates that we are going to get are really accredited or recognized by the accreditation bodies. So right now I would say that we are in the stage of doing it, but please give us some time, maybe few months before which I mean after which we would be in a position to do to prepare samples. Thank you. Thank you, Sanjay. I don't know if Christian you want to reply, but I'm taking notes. I would like to make a comment because ISO is one organization that makes standards and how to say the efficiency of a standard standardization body is the number of members. I think this is why Glossolan is absolutely unique because there is no network that is as big as Glossolan and it's worldwide. So I think it's very important to go one step forward and I would not like to say prepare our own accreditation but having our own rules and all rules about uncertainty and the quality controls and so on. And I think if after this you would like to have ISO is a next step because ISO accreditation is always very expensive. And this is why the spirit of Glossolan is to help each other and to make the things on a volunteer basis to avoid the commercial relations between us. So I think if we can start, even if everything is not perfect. It's not a problem. We are all going forward together. So really I would like you to encourage you to to prepare samples and send them because this will help you to improve all the steps. And Michael Watts from the British Geological Survey that is preparing the samples for many PT providers. In fact, they prepare it and they sell it to PT providers that sell it to other laboratories and Michael Watts and the British Geological Survey can help you. But I think you must not be shy to ask recommendation or comments. And as I mentioned at the beginning of presentation, the document that Glossolan has provided is for internal quality control, because all the labs should already prepare their own samples and improving little by little the skills. If you remember the first presentation we made in Bogor, in Indonesia, it was the stairs and the people going up the stairs. And you see, for the success, there is no lift. You have to go one step after one step and one step after one step. And I think I really encourage all the labs and don't be shy or slow down by any eyes because they are requirements that we probably do not need and we have to improve little by little. So, but, but it's very good that you already received the instruments and that once you will be the trainers for the others too. Thank you for your remarks. So I'm signing up India for the time actually they're still waiting for the equipment because they're receiving the same equipment of Costa Rica but the boxes got switched and we have problems of voltage now. Yes. But we are trying to solve it. But I'm taking notes of the potential after the participation of India in this exercise as a sample provider. And I'm reading in the chat there is also maybe the willingness of the Philippines to serve as a sample provider but at the end of 2022. Since they might have a project that will, will allow them for the establishment of quality control material of a quality control material production center out this is great. Gina wants to add something to this. And I'm also, I also would like to ask Thailand if they feel eventually like conducting this exercise again so leading the preparation of samples for a regional PT once again. Gina, would you like to add something to what you've wrote in the chat. Yes, thank you Dr. Lucretia and thank you Dr. Christian Hartman I miss you too. Yes, I miss you so much. My Zoom does not have raise hand so that's why I'm always late. Okay, so next time if I want to raise hand it's okay if I just clap. First, with regards to the contribution to the provision of PT materials. Yes, under the National Soil Health Program we already approved about 35 million US dollars for the improvement of our laboratories. All 18 laboratories of the Department of Agriculture, and part of this approved fund is the establishment of the quality control production center reference material production center. As in this, we already have some of the equipment already as suggested also by NOC. So it's ready and what we need maybe is the technical assistance for the, so we will, this is one of the activities that we can do towards the second and third quarter. The activities in terms of preparation, production, stability, homogeneity, all considerations for PT. By God's grace towards the last quarter, and that is almost the same time, we share the sample, Philippines is ready. Thank you. Thanks Gina. I don't know if Thailand would like to reply to my call for an eventual second organization of the regional PT. I saw you in the list of participants, do you want to talk on behalf of Thailand? Okay. Hello. For PT in this year, Thailand already prepared for PT sample, one sample. To remember the last penalty SMB, that's my deputy director said Thailand can support ASP joint country about PT for one sample. So one sample. Okay. This sample is already, this already has homogeneity test. What we can perhaps do Lucretia is after that meeting, organize a meeting with a smaller group of interested countries, because I know that Sanjay is highly motivated and I was very impressed when I was in Bhopal. I still have a meeting, the shirt you offered. This is why I'm missing also the real meetings. I can have more shirts when I have more meetings. And, and so we can make a working group because perhaps some people feel shy to speak because they're nearly 100 participants but I really feel that you are able to do it in Asia. You have the biggest countries in the world in Asia. You see, so it should not be a problem. Very big countries with many laboratories it's I think you will perform it very well. And that was the first interlaboratory comparison with Latin America immediately after. So I really would like to see net and Asia to be able to launch it next year because you have all the resources to do it. So don't don't feel shy. So perhaps we will make a working meeting with a smaller group of people and, and discuss all the technical aspect that Sanjay Gina, but I know in, in, in Indonesia they have skills also and many other countries you see. You have some specific soils. So it's important, for example, countries having volcanic soils to be able to prepare volcanic soils and share around the world. India has a huge diversity of soils. So you can, for sure, provide more than one sole type. You have also mountainous soils in the northern part of the country and so on. So I think even some of your soils can be used for glossol and for worldwide interlaboratory comparison. So I don't know if you agree, Lucasia, but we try to find a date to make a smaller. So my suggestion, I very welcome this suggestion. I very welcome your suggestion. I'm taking notes. And my proposal is that we send an email to the network at the end of this meeting, asking for those that may be here do not feel like talking. However, they would be interested in becoming sample providers. And then we organize the meeting with all those that express interest. Yes. And now let me give the floor to Pakistan because they will like to say a few words from FFT from Pakistan the floor is yours. The microphone is muted. Yeah, we can hear you. I think there is a problem with the audio. Yeah, his microphone is muted. The icon shows the microphone is muted. Yeah, but before it was not muted. Try now. No, we cannot hear you. I'm sorry. I think there is a problem with your microphone. You will try again. Meanwhile, is there anyone else that would like to take the floor. About the organization of the regional city. Or if you have any question on the organization or national city. If you would like to organize it in your country. Yes, if we are organizing a working group about intelligence comparison, I think some lab managers who are interested to do it for their own lab or for their own country, must feel free to join also. Because you can also start like this doing for your lab doing for your countries, or even some, how to say neighboring countries or labs you are feeling friendly having friendly relations. If you would like to start on a small scale and not preparing too much sample, but do it on a small scale. No problem. We can, as Philip mentioned, we can advise for this also. Yeah. Did you sort out the issue with the microphone. Yes, please confirm. Can you listen me. Yes. No, yes. The floor is yours. Okay, I will suggest I have a feeling here in Pakistan, maybe in other countries. We are feeling lack of coordination even at country level. I will suggest we may go for coordination at country level with respect to pity testing. We have initially as a first step baby baby step for pity testing at country level so that we may have harmonization standardization at country level. Then later on the next step, we can go for regional level pity, then subsequently world level global level pity testing for participation, and this will create harmonization at country level. Then later on, we may go for better understanding of protocols at grass root level for among all the participating laboratories. We are conceding lack of harmonization at country level with respect to procurement procedure with respect to protocols with respect to working environment. That's why I will suggest we should go for we should go for pity at country level for better understanding among all the participants. Okay, okay from my side. Thank you. This is the comment I just made if people laboratories who want to organize, even at national level a pity. They must feel to join the working group, even if you do not immediately do it for sending the samples at regional level but to organize it because you have also a big country, probably with many laboratories and it's important to start. Let's say, learning, as you mentioned, at a small scale and expand little by little, and we would be more than happy to do it. And, and I encourage all the labs to go on the website for the fertilizer company. Yeah, in Pakistan, I am from for the fertilizer company, we are privately for extending this water testing services with the forming community of Pakistan, across the country. First, we may have a strong collaboration with government agencies at Pakistan level, then certainly at global level we will extend our expertise. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you to you. Thank you, Yersha for your suggestion and intervention. Is there anyone else from the floor that would like to talk. If not, the agreement was that we will follow up by email and we will organize a meeting only for those that wish to organize national or PT or national regional PT. Okay. If there are no other remarks, I suggest to move to the next item in the agenda that is the position of still netting gloss on. If you're all fine, I will share my screen people I will work on the drive, just in case I lose connection. So as you know, every year we, we ask the reasons to take a position on decisions that will have to be made by the global network. Your position will be reported by the, the seal next chair, but you are also invited to attend the gloss on meeting and express an opinion during during the meeting as well. So, we start from SOP so the decision on the standard operating of procedures that gloss on should harmonize in 2021 2022. This is just some preliminary information or actually background information on how we have been doing these work so far. So so far priority was given to the harmonization of soil chemical parameters and only last year so in 2020 gloss on started to work on so physical and so biological parameters. Again so far priority was given to the most important parameters for soil fertility and the most use methods in the world. This is an overview of the SOPs gloss on harmonized so far. These are divided by years. So as you see, we started with a few SOPs in 2018, just to improve our harmonization way and and everything like to basically improve our procedures. And then the number of SOPs that we are monize increased in 2019 and in 2020. So the SOPs you see here on the 2018 and 2019 were already harmonized and published on the gloss on website. We have some delay with the writing of the SOP on mineral nitrogen. And it was decided to postpone the writing of the SOP on Mali three to 2020 because we wanted to extend the scope of this SOP to include the macro and micronutrients. And in 2020, as I told you, we are harmonizing all these SOP that include physical and biological parameters. Now, this comes to a proposal that I would like to make because five years after the establishment of gloss on, we might be ready to make a step forward and start working on those methods that maybe are less frequently used, but have lower risk for human health and environment. And this gives me the opportunity to remind you that on the gloss on our webpage, you have, well, the SOPs, all the SOPs we are harmonizing the text that we are making available in online as many languages as possible, basically, depending on the availability of translators. And for each parameter we have a table with the list of methods that you can use to make the analysis and an indication on the risk for human health and environmental risk. Plus other information like duration average duration of the analysis and medium price level of technology and so on, but I would like to bring your attention to the risk related to them to the use of the methods. So far we are we have been harmonizing all methods that have medium to high risk. So, you know, one of the objectives of gloss on is that of promoting the transition towards the use of more sustainable methods. In any regard, I would like to ask your opinion on eventually this proposal to look into the harmonization of less frequently used methods, but methods that are more sustainable that have a low, low medium risk for the human health and the environment. So we do not do not have a poll for this, but it's just for your thinking because in a few slides I will ask you to make a proposal on the SOPs to harmonize and that you might keep what I just told you into consideration when making your proposal. So again, we will make a proposal on the SOPs to harmonize. And while doing so, we will also try to identify regional leaders that can look after the harmonization of these SOPs. So what are regional leaders and what do they do. They should contribute to prepare the SOP matrix. I think you all know what I'm talking about because gloss on every year when it comes to SOP the harmonization of methods, send the matrix to all laboratories in the network one matrix per each method. And we ask laboratories to complete it with information on the procedures they are implementing in their laboratory for that specific method. Then the regional leaders should harmonize the information in the matrix from the region so in this case you would work on Asian information. And then contribute to prepare the global harmonized matrix and the drafting review and finalization of the gloss on SOPs so really like the word document. Each SOP has a regional leader serving as global leader as well. Now global leaders on one step on top of the regional leaders in the working group for one simple reason that they take responsibility over the overall writing and publication of the SOP. In this regard, the gloss on coordinators like me and Filippo, when we wonder where we are standing with the writing of an SOP, go first to the working group. But if we receive no response, then we really bring the topic to the attention of the global leader that has to take action accordingly. Now, I would like, now we get to really to the core of the discussion because I would like you to please make proposals on the SOPs that glossolars should harmonize in 2021-2022. On Monday we had the meeting of the AFRILAB network and that's very likely for you because we give you like a baseline for reflection. So here are the proposals made by AFRILAB. Okay, so you can also have a look at them and think if you think that these methods are also important for your region and make your proposal. You can either raise your hand or write in the chat. I would like you to please keep into consideration that we cannot harmonize the following methods and SOPs for the simple reasons that these were already harmonized or are being harmonized now. So please do not propose the harmonization of any of the following. Okay. I don't remember who has to help me with moderating this session. Okay. Can you help me moderating the discussion please? Sanjay, are you with us? Yes, it was muted actually. So my suggestion is that we should invite opinions from our members regarding this and already one from this AFRILAB it is there. So we can use the what AFRILAB proposed as a baseline. So for example, do you think that exchangeable acidity by KCL method applies to the region? Is it important in Asia? In our country, somebody is speaking. Sorry, you were breaking. Hello, what I'm saying is that this method is not used in our country. But let us invite the opinion of other people also. Total carbon by loss of ignition. Yes, this is also important. So buffer capacity using potassium hydroxide available phosphorus by KCL. These are not the very popular methods used in India. So your proposal would be for... Yeah, this is okay. What about the other countries? What is important in your country? What methods do you use or you would like a glossol on to harmonize? These are just ideas from Africa. You can propose other methods. Silence. I am from Sri Lanka. I am Renuka. I think in our country, total carbon by loss of ignition is needed. Thanks, Renuka. We have an input from Thailand and Kintan. So Kintan proposes exchangeable KCL and total carbon by LOI. Let me put it on screen. LOI is a loss of ignition so you can delay that one. Sorry? The Thailand proposes exchangeable acidity by Barium Chlorine. Can it be? Lucrecia, the line above is exchangeable acidity by KCL is also on the left side. You copy two times if the people would like the same. That's it. No, this is for SIL and this is for AFRIRAB. I just reported AFRIRAB inputs to facilitate the discussion to break the ice. Yes, I also suggest that we should use this opportunity to survey majority practices. Indeed, actually, my proposal, but this is more for the Glossalon meeting, was to basically put together the inputs from the regions and run a survey to see what methods are really used. I actually use the most or more. Because one of the problems, and I will show you in the next slide, that we are encountering for some of the SOPs that Glossalon decided to harmonize that very few laboratories use the methods. Xtaisatis is asking for exchangeable bases, but we are working on it this year. If I remember well, this should be with NOC, I think. Exchangeable bases and the CEC by ammonium acetate. So we are already doing it. Maybe what about physical parameters? So we would like to invite laboratories to propose also methods on physical and biological, even if you do not perform these parameters, but you are aware of some methods that you would like to harmonize. Because one of the outcomes of the global assessment on soil laboratory needs and capacities was that we know all laboratories perform chemical parameters, but few of them perform physical and especially biological parameters. So as also NOC suggests, maybe we should also try to focus more on these other parameters in order to enlarge the spectrum of possible potential parameters analyzed by laboratories. So we encourage you to make suggestions, especially on these two categories. Yeah, and this actually gives us the opportunity to invite laboratories. So basically all of you to please invite other laboratories that work on physical and biological parameters. Because at present we have very few laboratories in gloss around that actually take care of the analysis of these parameters. So if you could invite laboratories that do physical and biological analysis to join gloss around that would be highly appreciated. I see in the chat that the Philippines and also support the idea of working on water retention. Is there any other proposal for physical parameters or biological parameters? The idea of Africa was that most of the methods were already harmonized. So that's why they made the few proposals. But maybe we can also propose like less frequently used methods that are more sustainable as I told you before. Sanjay, do you have any proposal for physical and biological parameters? I'm also asking, well Gina is already writing in the chat. I'm also asking Susu to knock for inputs. For actually Christian was in this case because he's an expert on physical parameters. If you have any suggestions? Well Lucrezia we have already done bulk density, moisture, those things. The common laboratory methods we have already done. Now if specific methods is required I think no otherwise there would be very specific advanced methods not routinely used in the laboratories. The ones that are routinely used we have already harmonized. But I have a suggestion in chemical parameters. We have not done available nitrogen. So can we include exchangeable this ammonium and nitrates? Because several laboratories in the world they use these readily available source of nitrogen as available nitrogen. So this is a suggestion. By what method? Method means it's a chemical method we extract potassium chloride, white potassium chloride. Just now you can simply write exchangeable ammonium and nitrogen. We may, later on, we may invite how people are estimating. They're writing by KCL like this. Okay. We are not doing it already. No. Okay. What do other labs think exchangeable ammonium and nitrate by KCL. Right. You just write exchangeable ammonium and nitrate. Don't write KCL right now. I think we may. Okay, you want to be specific. Yeah, the more specific we are the better because for it. So but this is part of the exchangeable basis that we have been harmonizing using ammonium acetate. No, it's not actually simple basis. It's different. Okay, so it was a proposal by him by Gina. Yeah, no, we already did it. Gina for this year. Okay, so all fine with these four parameters for the chemical part. And for physical parameters we propose only water retention. And then there was water holding capacity also. We are not proposing. We are not doing it right. So shall I add the water holding capacity to the list. And no proposal for the biological parameters. Are you fine with this. If yes, maybe we can start identifying regional leaders. So who would like to work on the total carbon by loss of ignition. Is there any volunteer to be in the working group. I see. Now I'm looking at the chat on who made the proposal, but do not get scared, you can say no. Okay. So, link up. Would you like to be in the working group. No, okay. Nini teams from Myanmar. Would you like to be in the working group. She ran away. Okay. Would you like to be in the working group. Is there any volunteer for these SOP for this method. I would like to in working group in total carbon by loss of ignition. Oh, thank you. What about exchangeable acidity by KCL. Is there anyone that would like to work on. Again, I'm looking at the top link up again. Would you like. What about Nini team. And team times again. I only wonder what's in the chat. Who would like to work on exchangeable acidity by KCL. Welcome. What about the exchangeable acidity by. Hmm. Well, BACL to any volunteer. Philippines can take exchangeable acidity using barium chloride. And this way. Okay. We'll have some inputs from the chat. If there are other interested. Sorry members may take easy. Sorry. I cannot read the whole name in the. Yeah, I asked for it. I will write in the chat. We will also have. Srinivas. From I don't know what we should suppose I think the exchangeable acidity. I saw that. Yeah. Yeah. Dr. Srinivas for which method you would like to support. Dr. Srinivas. But which one. Exchangeable acidity. Which one. KCL. In India they performed by KCL. What. The first one. The first one. Exchangeable ammonium. I'm putting that side guy. Yeah, you can keep. Dr. Dr. Tell me again. Yes. Thank you. Sorry. Sorry. What about physical parameters? We like to work on water retention. We merge this to Christian. What do you think is possible to. Merge these two into one SOP as that's. Related. I think so. It seems to me that water holding capacity is the same as water. Yes. Like he's a driving from, from the Corvias. Yeah. So maybe look at say we can put like, yeah, it's like just what the reduction curve also include the. Like informational water holding capacity. Okay. As far as I can remember. In Indonesia. They were motivated people for, for this. So. Yeah. Yes. Yes. I write your name. Link. Yeah, it would be a pleasure to collaborate again on this. Okay. By email anyway. So if you feel like thinking about your volunteering for. The position. Well, take it sometime and then we will get back to it also because it needs to be confirmed by the gloss on. At the gloss on meeting. Now, let me go back to the presentation. This is just to inform, inform you that all laboratories sending information and authors are acknowledged in the gloss on SOPs. Indeed at the bottom of each SOP, you have a reference on, on a list of authors and a list of contributing laboratories. So also when you complete the matrix. That the, that I send you, or that's really postsense you that we're prepared by the world. And then in the appendix is that we have an appendix with acknowledgments on everybody that contributed to the finalization of the SOP. A list of authors and. A list of contributing laboratories. That we send you or that's really postsense you that we're prepared by the working group. Your inputs were very much appreciated and that this is recognized in the, in the dedicated appendix of the SOP. Now I would like to ask you your opinion on the two issues that we encounter while harmonizing the SOPs. 2021. One of them is that some methods are used by very few laboratories that completed the harmonization matrix is. So question, can we still talk about globally harmonized SOPs in this case because we received very few inputs from laboratories. And eventually show we review our way to harmonize these type of SOPs. So, I don't know what you think about it. If you have any proposal on, on how to overcome this issue, we still use the harmonization matrix and produce the SOPs. In the same way, even if we receive a few inputs from laboratories. And then a second issue is that the working group for some SOPs and especially talking about the SOPs on biological parameters, but we also have the same problem for the SOPs on organic carbon fractionation and the one on bottom count on the support of very few experts. And ultimately this slows down the, the wall harmonization process. So my question to you is if you have any suggestion on how we can overcome this issue, it's not the problem of willingness to help by experts, but it's really a problem of availability of experts in the working group. So the floor is open for suggestions on how we can overcome these issues. So in the first case, do we still want to use the harmonization matrix and are, and still talk about globally harmonized SOPs, even if we receive little inputs. The second one is how we overcome the fact that we have a few experts in the working groups for some method. How shall we move on this regard? Shall we maybe just ask Grosso and to identify one expert, a really top expert on the topic to take care of the wall harmonization in this case? Or what shall we do? We're really looking for suggestions. If there is any. Dr. Lucretia, sorry I do not have a break. So can we now respond to the two issues? Sure, please. Okay, thanks. I think the major objective, why we go into harmonization of test methods, it's because we want that our data, at least within our region and in this case, Asian region can be exchanged and compared with. And at the same time, as earlier reported by NC, we want to come up with maps. And of course, maps should also be comparable between and among the countries, at least again for the Asian region. So I always try to highlight at least for the Asian region because I think first thing, one of the decision that has to be made in the harmonization of the test methods is that it should be common. That method should be common among the countries in the Asian region because we want to come up with the harmonized sense of data, which we can exchange with given our geographical location. So there must be similarity in climate, similarity in land uses and ultimately for land use planning purposes. So I just think that for issue number one, we need to consider what is the most common method in the country. One consideration is commonality of that particular method between and among the Asian countries. And that can be made as the basis of our decision for harmonizing a particular test method. I believe the reason that other countries cannot participate in the harmonization of the test method is because they make use of alternative methods, which can be supported by their available equipment, facilities, and even manpower. So that could be the reason, but still we do not lose track of the purpose of harmonization to make our data interchangeable and comparable across locations. So I think we just have to consider which one is most common and still we should proceed with the harmonization of the test methods. That is for the first issue. For the first issue first, Dr. Duprescia. Yes, here. I put it here. So I reserve my comment for the second issue. So what does the audience think about the proposal of Gina? So we should just work on methods that are common to the region. May I add? I just think that as in my earlier elaboration, what may be the limitation is the availability of the equipment. So this means there are countries within the Asian region that are more advanced. Given that consideration, so there may be other ways of developing within the region or transformation of the, it will be another technical job to be able to transform the result of one method, discovering the correction factor or conversion factor such that it can be applied for the other countries within the region. Because to me, I think our ultimate objective is to be able to exchange the data and map this data. I lost a part of what you were saying because the connection dropped. What shall I add to this text that we should work on on common method in the region? Country should be supported in terms of equipment for conducting the analysis. And what about transfer function, conversion function? Yeah. Some of the countries cannot really support the method that is being used by other countries making use of the advanced technologies or equipment. A special study should be conducted to, in terms of conversion of the results, transforming the results of one method to a closest estimate making use of another method. So it's really a transfer function, a correction factor or something like that. Yeah, basically, this is what we did for the Turing method that included the, in the SOP, there is a conversion factor to compare the results of the method with those obtained by work in black, right? That's what you meant. Is there any other comment to this? What about the second question about the experts? Well, I was reading in the chat, one suggestion is to spread the voice on Glossalon and ask more about laboratories. So spread the voice and ask laboratories that do physical and biological analysis to register to the network. What else? I was making the proposal maybe to identify for the time being one. Yeah, Dr. Dopresce, sorry, I'm very sorry. Gina? Yes. Maybe we can talk about commissioning a group of experts. And I don't know how can this be funded if this is, if this can be funded through TCP. So it will just be a special project that can be submitted for funding to be able to identify the most relevant biological parameters that can be used for the region and the SOP. Then the work of the, because I think the other problem is that not even in the Philippines, we made an inventory of our soil laboratories. There are very few laboratories out of 43. I can count with my fingers the number of laboratories working on soil biology. So if we commission a group of experts and have it funded through TCP, if that is possible. So part of the terms of preference and output of this working group is to identify the most relevant soil parameters and propose the most relevant method to be used by, that can be applied to many of the Asian countries. So it's really commissioning an expert. As it is now, most of the laboratories are still in their decision stage, whether to proceed to including biological parameters in their analysis. As I said in the Philippines, there are only few laboratories doing biological parameters in their laboratories. So by commissioning a group of experts that would recommend for a most relevant sets of biological parameters and methods then that can be one big bold step to start with motivating all other laboratories in the Asian region to do biological analysis on some of the biological parameters. Thank you. Thank you, Gina. So I'm writing three options. One is to spread the voice. To ask laboratories to do this analysis to register. Another one is commissioning a group of experts to do the work with a note on the possibility to write a TCP project on this and then make specific requests to experts to do the work. And this would be on a volunteer basis. So no need to write project proposals for this. I'm, I brought them based on what is in the chapter. Is there any other proposal? Yes. Okay. I thought that someone wanted to talk. Let me go back to this for a moment because there was a note on microbial identification for biological parameters. What do you think about this proposal? Thank you. That's a proposal from my team. So this is like what Africa is asking, right? In terms of species. Yes, microbial population identification. Okay. Is there anyone willing to work on this? If there is no one who is willing, Philippines is willing, but I give the opportunity to all others who may want to work at it, but we are already doing this. Okay. Well, eventually, if someone else feels like joining the group, please let me know by email. I would like to move to the next topic for decision making. We are going to finish like, I guess 15 minutes late, but we try not to finish any, any later than 15 minutes. Fidipo, can you help me on these to recap the training request by the network? So one was on the, I remember the preparation. Of samples for internal and external. And especially yes. Quality control. And then we have a high demand for SOP. Training. Laboratory management. Health and safety. And then equipment. Because those of spectroscopy we are already implementing, right? Yeah. The more precise we can, you can be, I mean, I call the lab so the better it is because then we will be able to prepare specific training for you. So like equipment, are we talking about the general trainings or training specific, specific to some type of equipment. Health and safety. Is there any special aspect of the topic that you would like to be trained on? Maybe I don't know, like how to, to treat waste in the laboratories or things like that. What SOPs you are interested in the most. Also, I'm making a call for trainers. Is any of you willing to give any of the trainings in the list? I guess it will be English. Or as I said, if we want to organize any country specific training, so we can also do it. We can facilitate the process. I'm thinking especially to those countries that have a lot of laboratories and very big, like India, China, but also Philippines has a lot of laboratories. Anjai, please. I saw you rise the hand. Sorry, sorry. Again, it was muted. So what I want to say here in the very first topic, the preparation of samples for internal and external quality control. Here I have a suggestion. This is I think the important topic, but only half of the topic is covered. What would be very beneficial for the people is to not only just prepare the sample, but also if it is possible to show the statistical testing results of these samples. For example, suppose if somebody, the proficiency testing provider. So they prepared the samples and what was the testing results? For example, let us say for available fast for us. So 20 samples they had drawn from out of say 100 samples. What were the results? What was the statistical analysis and how the interpretation was done? So these things are very important because this will instill confidence in the people who are newly now preparing these samples for proficiency testing and also doing statistical analysis. So that is my suggestion that preparation of sample for external quality control and as well as the testing results, statistical testing. Just want to extend that topic. Thank you. So statistical analysis and testing. Right? Okay. Yeah. So I also added like how to conduct an interlaboratory comparisons and what else? If there are no other inputs. Is there any volunteer for providing these trainings? Well, Christian, maybe you can do the one on statistical analysis of the PT. Yeah, with pleasure. And I think even with no can the help of Michael or everything related to PT. After this, it's, as you mentioned, the people must, we can make a general presentation for people who are not aware. And after this answer also some very specific questions. It depends on the request of the people. And as you mentioned, the request of the people has to be as clear as possible so that the training we're doing are really adapted to the need the people have. Okay. I think these are also like sample preparation. If you're ready to include it. Here. Okay. Thanks. Okay. And then we will think if any of you really we are strongly encouraging the regions to provide trainers. Because, you know, it's a. It's an exchange like it's not only one way direction of the communication and the training, but we consider you all great professionals and we are sure that you have many things to teach and share with others. So please do not feel shy. Trust in yourself and really volunteer to give the training. So some of you will already provide training. But, you know, we really encourage everybody from all countries to think about it. We would not say no to you, you know, as long as you know the topic, we really want you to give the training. Please. Another topic for decision. So we receive the request from the global soil partnership to work on range of reference values to facilitate the provision of recommendations to farmers and other stakeholders. Let's start from range value. So what are range values? Well, the GSP would like us to include in the SOPs the range of validity of the method. For example, method X is reliable for, for example, soil organic content from a value to another value. What do you think? Do you think that Glossalan should provide this type of information in SOPs? So if I hope that everybody is clear on what is a range value and Phillipo, can you please launch the poll? Now we will ask you to vote. So you will see on your screen a window in which there is a question for decision and you can say yes or no. Do you agree on including range values in the Glossalan SOPs? Yes or no? So I'm sharing your results as we reach the majority. So you don't, do not force in any limitation to the implementation of these requests. Okay. Second question. They also ask us to include in these reference values. So what is a reference value? Well, basically it's the provision of an indication on the status of soil. For example, values from zero to one grams per kilograms indicate soils pouring phosphorus. For example, from one to two, it's a low-medium content, two to three, it's a medium content, three to four, it's high and so on. So do you agree on defining these reference values? So should Glossalan work on this? Is the question clear? Filippo, please launch the poll. Again, we are asking you to vote and to express an opinion. So show Glossalan work on reference values that provide an indication of the status of soil. Okay. So the majority said yes. Do you force in any limitation or obstacles to the provision of reference values? Is there any technical note we should take into consideration when working on this? Exciting is asking about the chemical probe. So I think this refers to the reference values, right? So like how can we determine these values? Is this your question? You can also take the floor. Exciting if you like. By opening your microphone. Training. Training of what? Reference values. Chemical concentration. Okay. So you are asking us to add to this slide. Maybe Sanjay, you can wisdom my supporter on this. Sanjay, right? Yes. You can help me to understand. Thank you. Yeah, I'm also a little confused. Training chemical concentration. If you can better formulate your request. Added to the notes. Yeah, good. Good afternoon. Lucas. Yeah. I mean a chemical. Concentration, how to prove the chemical concentration. And this is the training we need. So in terms of, I put it under the SOPs. So it's basically like to assess the quality of chemicals. Yes. Yes. Okay. Perfect. If there is no other remarks. And if I didn't miss anything. I would like to move to the last item in the agenda that is the governance. It will not take long. So the governance of a sealant was defined at the first sealant meeting in 2017. In that occasion, we decided to have one chair and one vice chair. However, two years after the launch of the network, we decided to identify two vice chairs. That's why the position is now taken by Susu win from Myanmar and Sanjay from India. The mandate for this position is two years and the terms of preference for this position are available in annex four of the first sealant meeting that is available at the Lincoln screen. At present, the governance of the network is as I told you, like hold by Dr. Susu win from Myanmar and Sanjay from India. So I would like first of all to thank Gina, Susu and Sanjay for the support they've been providing to the network over these years. We really appreciated it. And I'm sure that the members of the network really appreciated it. So thank you very much for your support. Before getting to the elections, I have two proposals to make to sealant members. The first one refers to the reviewing of the governance, not in terms of positions. Basically, all networks about the last one, so the network for Latin America accounts on one chair and one or two vice chairs. However, in last one, they also established a hearing committee that is meant to support the work of the chair and vice chair. And these resulted to be extremely active and efficient and really to make it made a difference in the region. So my, sorry. So my question to you is if you agree on establishing such a hearing committee in your region. So would you like to have the governance revised, to have one chair, one or two vice chairs, and the steering committee composed by maybe five active members of the network? Philip, can you please launch the poll? So again, we're asking you to vote. So do you agree on the proposal to establish a steering committee to support the work of the sealant chair and vice chairs? Okay. We reach majority and the proposal is endorsed. So thank you so much for expressing an opinion and voting on this. You should see the results of these votes on screen. Then second proposal. We would like to strengthen the position of the chair and vice chairs in the region to allow them to do real follow ups in each country and in the overall region. So in this regard, we would like our proposal is to review the terms of preference for the position of chair and vice chairs. And also a few hours common to all regions because at present in the region has, let's say, like different, slightly different to ours and we would like to harmonize things. The idea is that, for example, of sharing information on the network. So really details on the laboratories registered in the network for specific regions with the chair and vice chairs so that they can send you emails, you know, I can do follow ups to the request of Glossalon when we see that countries for some labs are not responding, but are very important for the network. For the implementation of work. So if you welcome this idea, then Philip and myself, we dropped the revised terms of preference for the position of president chair and vice chair and send you and send them to you all for review. And then the ultimate endorsement will be made at the Glossalon meeting. So what do you think about this proposal? Philip, please launch the poll. So do you agree on the proposal to revise the terms of preference for the position of still nature and vice chairs and to ask you are common to all regions. We almost reach majority please vote. Philip, I think we can close it. Proposal endorsed. Thank you very much. So we will proceed and follow up by email. Now in terms of elections, this will be very quick because in terms of chair of stillness, we have only one candidate. Dr. Gina needle kindly recandidated for the position. I remind you that she is the current chair of stillness. So, Dr. Gina, would you like to say a few words to ask countries to re-support your candidates or to the position before we ask them to actually express an opinion on it. Okay, thank you very much, Dr. And to all member countries of stillness. And thank you very much for the three years support 2019-2021 for this very important undertaking of stillness. And I thank you for all the achievements for this last three years. But I do believe that there are still many more things that we need to do together and to sustain whatever we have started. Actually, I'm happy with the proposal that was set by Dr. Lucretia in terms of the terms of preference of the chair to the stillness because I think it is also important to us to work more closely than we used to do. And I think this is one important highlight of the proposal for us to be able to do it country from country. I like that because actually in the earlier presentation of Dr. Lucretia with regards to the development of proposal for the Asian region, I have I think already emphasized that in my opening speech that I am looking of scaling up the national soil health program in all of the Asian region because that program was already accepted here in the Philippines. And it was given the full support of about 29.6, about 30 million US dollars just for the Philippines alone. But if you take closely at that proposal, it covers all the other contribution of the global soil laboratories in all of the pillar of action of Glozulan. And this is one thing I would like to scale up at the Asian region. And that's the very reason why I am also interested to stay on as the SealNet chair. Second, I have already expressed the challenge for all of our national reference laboratories to strive to become the center of excellence in the soil laboratories in the Asian region. And I think in all of our meetings is standardization, training. I think these are the key ingredients by which we can achieve center of excellence as a national reference laboratory and even member network laboratories for the Asian region. So let's all strive for excellence. I cannot do it on my own, but we are here as a network to help each other. And the third activity that I would like to share with and intensify in the SealNet is really to build a strong network. And now we are here as SealNet. But I think we still have to build up from within our countries. So we have to promote the establishment of the national soil laboratory network. And at the same time establishing all these network laboratories to meet the global standards. As we are doing now, it's really towards working a global standards for our laboratories. So in all of this, I need your support, your cooperation. Let us unite together. We can do it by God's grace. Thank you very much. And God bless us all. Thank you very much, Gina, for these inspiring words. I would like now to ask the floor and actually the participants to express an opinion on your reelection. So do we all agree to have Gina to serve as the SealNet here for a second Monday? Gina, I would like to thank you. I would like to thank you. You are the most rich majority. And you have full support, Gina. So congratulations and many thanks for volunteering to be a candidate for a second Monday. I have to give you a bad news that is that you will be on so far on this because we do not have any candidates for the position of vice chair of the network. So my question to everybody is the opinion of you feels like volunteering or taking up the position of vice chair of SealNet. If yes, well, you can tell us either now or you can tell us by email. Okay. Good morning. And we will follow up to format. I don't see any expression of interest coming in the chat. But please think if you would have time to dedicate to SealNet and if you would like to support Gina in her mission to make SealNet great and help all laboratories in the region. There is a comment from Marife. like a potential candidate or just as acknowledgement of the election of Gina. Marifa, would you like to candidate for the position of vice chair? Okay, here they are making proposals. So they would like to have Sanjay again. And they are, my understanding is that they are proposing Dr. Srenivas from India. They're also asking Thailand to candidate. I don't know if these candidates feel like I'm writing it down. What is the proposal? No, no, no, Thailand. So they would like to have Sanjay again. They would like to have Thailand to candidate. And then there is the proposal to have the serve from India. We really contact Sanjay and I think he can decline to this, but we do want to inform the about this. Maybe after this standing ovation for him is changed. There are also proposals. I am writing everything that is in the chat. They are asking for Renuka and they're asking for Pakistan. So Sanjay, are you sure that you don't want to take the position for a second mandate? Lucrezia, I think I expressed earlier, I would be happy if some new people become take this role. Okay, Sanjay out. Thailand, would you like to consider the possibility to become vice chair? I don't know if there are still participants from Thailand because we are late on the agenda. If not, Dr. Srenivas, what about you? Would you like to candidate for the position? Srenivas from India. Yes, I understand. Okay, what about Srenuka? Srenuka, are you still with us? Would you like to candidate for the position? These days I am busy with other works. Therefore, I cannot accept this position. Okay, thank you anyway. What about Pakistan? Who from Pakistan would like to candidate eventually? Yes, ma'am, I have mentioned Pakistan. If anyone interested from Pakistan, he can take the position of that vice chair. Otherwise, I am ready to accept this position. Depending on the acceptance and the consensus that developed among the participants. So we have Muhammad Abbas Aziz from Pakistan that is available to take the position if there are no other candidates from the country. Is there any other candidates from the country? Indonesia, Linka, or any other colleague from your office? Would you feel like taking the position? Linka, are you still with us? What about Thailand? Would you like to candidate? I am now adjusting about SOP in the physical parameter, but for this position maybe not now. Okay, thank you, Zanida. Linka, I don't know if you have time to think about it. Thank you, Linka. So my proposal is that Dr. Srenivas, I'm sorry if I pronounce it bad, and Dr. Aziz shared their CVs with us and we send it to the network for basically making a decision. And then we make online elections by email. Is that okay? Yeah, okay, we'll share our CVs with the network. Okay, CV for email. Thank you very much for convidating and for not leaving Gina alone on this mission, very important mission. So this is the closure of our meeting. I would like to give the floor actually to Sanjay and Susu if they're still with us for delivering some closing remarks. Since this is the end of their mandate and they might feel like say bye to everybody, temporary bye, because they will still be with us in the network, but not as much anymore. So Sanjay and Susu, if you would like to take the floor and deliver some greetings, the floor is yours. Let me speak. Thanks Lucrezia and it was really a very nice experience for the last two years, though on some occasions I found that I was really busy. I could not really deliver to some of the things in time, but it is really very good. And I think the persons who would share, who would contribute in this process, they would feel really very, very good from inside because it is a very, very noble cause. We are working, harmonization of these methods and sharing of the data could be interpreted throughout the world. This is something which we have been requiring since long. And it is the need of the hour. It's a very noble thing and it was very good experience for me. Thank you very much. And I would continue to contribute if I am competent and if I have time. And that's all I want to say. Thank you very much. Many thanks Sanjay. We will miss you a lot. Susu, are you with us? Because we are late, but I hope you are still with us. No, I don't see her. Thank you for the issue with the computer. Adria, the last question in the chat, I don't know if you want to address it. We are in a steering committee. So we will follow up on it by email as well. I'm referring to the steering committee. The question was on how these will be established. We will write the TORs first and then we will think about a way to establish it. I think that the best way is again to make a call for experts that have time to dedicate to this work. Because really by reviewing the TORs of the chair and vice chairs and establishing the steering committee, we will give more power to these experts in the network. And power comes with some responsibility of your work. So we want to ensure that the experts in the steering committee can actually do the work and help the chair and vice chair. So we will follow up by email, but I think we will make a call within the network for experts that have time to commit to this work. So I would like to thank you all. Apologies for the delay. It was super nice to see you, although it was virtual. Please do not hesitate to contact by email and don't forget to visit the Glossalon webpage. And we will do a follow-up on all decisions made at the meeting and also send you the link to the recording of this meeting and the presentations that were provided by email. Very important. Please do not forget to send me an email in case you want to apply for ECP project. This is the time to ask for money to FAO. So please don't forget about it. And we look forward to see you at the Glossalon meeting in one month. Thank you. Good afternoon. Good evening to everybody. And see you next time.