The members of Work packages (WPs) 1 and 2 were invited to a workshop at Kew (UK) in September 2009 to discuss various issues such as the criteria to be used to select plants, allocation of tasks among members, future meetings etc. Following this, both WPs held a joint Phase I Kick-off Meeting on 13th-14th September 2009 at Jodrell-Laboratory, Kew Gardens, Richmond, UK. The event was hosted by the WP1 coordinator Monique Simmonds and was attended by 22 GP-TCM members. During this joint event, the meeting attendees were given number of presentations such as overview of the GP-TCM project (Monique Simmonds), general strategy and specific aims of WP2 (Jandirk Sendker), medical plants produced under GAP (Zhongzhen Zhao) etc. The various items discussed included identification of needs for possible coordination with other WPs, review and discussion of 3-year plans, WP task allocation, definition of primary keys/identifiers for data collection, definition of selection criteria for the priority list of CHM, definition of information to be gathered in deliverables, website plans, and timeline for further work and tasks.
A preliminary list of plants has been distributed to members of the group and also forwarded to other WPs. It was agreed that the aim of the WP1 is to collate data about a number of species to enable us to identify gaps of information needed for TCM plants to meet the registration requirements within Europe and that the number of priority species of the WP should be low and thus might reflect a simple formulation that contains only a few species. Once the species are agreed, members will provide other groups with all relevant names for the selected species so that these can be used in database search. Tasks related to the early deliverables of WP1 and WP2 were allocated and the organisation of the imminent deliverable D2.4 was decided. The group agreed the structure of a simple database and requested whether they might be able to have Wikipedia style functionality for the WP1 and WP2 member space to download relevant material and data. Finally, the important issue of web-based communication and data consolidation was discussed. Members agreed to meet face to face in 2010 as a Phase II meeting and communicate virtually in between.
WP1 and WP2 group photo at the kick-off meeting
Group discussions at Kew
Demonstrations at Kew
