The Phase II meeting of WP1 and WP2 hosted by Peter Proksch brought together 17 participants from Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, United Kingdom and China at the beautiful Schloß Mickeln in Düsseldorf, Germany. The eruption of the volcano Eyjafjallajökull on Iceland took place around the time of the meeting and prevented any air transport in central Europe. The arrival of many invited participants was uncertain until late evening Sunday evening. Amazingly, many participants were willing to take great efforts to attend the meeting so that finally 17 of expected 19 participants somehow managed to come.
Lectures of Brigitte Kopp, Werner Knoess, Ian Sutherland and Svetlana Ignatova were followed by round table discussions about (i) the post-harvest treatment and extraction of TCM herbal drugs with a special focus on pao zhi, (ii) minimum acceptable standards for extract preparation and component analysis with special regard to existing European standards (iii) application of high speed counter current chromatography and (iv) criteria for the selection of priority list species. The work shop successively closed with a dinner near Rhine river.
