Founded in 1965, KOSA has 59 vegetable seed company members and is managed by a Board of Directors of 13, which includes the association’s president and five vice-presidents. Meetings, activities and events are organized and coordinated by the KOSA Secretariat. KOSA's Annual General Meetings are held every January. At its latest AGM on January 30, the association elected a new president (Jae-Bong IM -- Standing Committee for Agriculture, Food, Rural Affairs, Oceans and Fisheries, the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea), 12 new directors and two advisors:
KOSA Cooperates directly with five key government entities: the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs; the Animal and Plant Quarantine Agency; the Korean Seed and Variety Service; the Foundation of Agri Tech Commercialization & Transfer; and the Rural Development Administration. Its focus is breeding, producing, importing and exporting. In other recent news, KOSA last October signed an MoU with the Agricultural Genome Center, which supports and manages R&D projects related to agricultural genomics. The two organizations agreed to cooperate in areas of information exchange and technology transfer. KOSA organizes study tours for its members every year. Last November, a tour was organized in Vietnam. Other recent activities include the Board of Directors meeting with South Korea’s National Biodiversity Center last July and a Forum for Seed Industry Development last February. Since 2017, KOSA has helped sponsor the Ministry of Agriculture’s Korea Seed Expo in Jeonbuk Province, South Korea’s largest seed industry event -- in 2019 joined by 13 seed industry institutes and agencies, and 58 seed and agricultural companies. This year’s expo is also scheduled for October. Stay tuned for updates.
The above information is based on a presentation given during APSA's annual National Seed Associations meeting, held on 27 November, 2019, and additional information supplied by the KOSA Secretariat.