Registration of plant varieties
After many years of trials at different stages of research and development with new plant material, a decision has to be taken on the suitability of releasing a new variety on the market. If the variety has one or more characteristics that make it interesting to offer to farmers, an official registration process has to be carried out before it can be marketed.
Organizations involved in variety registration
Depending on the country, there are different official organizations in charge of managing the documentation and trials necessary for the registration of new varieties. Most countries (78 countries as of November 2021) are grouped under the umbrella of the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV), created in 1961.
UPOV’s mission is to encourage and promote an effective system of plant variety protection with the aim of ensuring the development of new varieties of plants. To this end, it has developed a series of technical guides for carrying out registration and characterisation trials of the new varieties to be registered in the different crops listed. The guides for different crops can be downloaded in several languages from its website.
In the European Union, the Community Plant Variety Office (OPVO) was created in 1995, with headquarters in Angers (France), which is the European agency in charge of managing the European system of plant variety rights. OPVO is in charge of granting intellectual property rights for new plant varieties, valid in EU countries for 25 years (30 years for potato, vine and tree species). For the registration of plant varieties, OPVO has developed a series of technical protocols similar to those of UPOV, for each of the species subject to registration, which can be downloaded here.
Variety registration trials
Basically, in order to register a new variety, it has to meet the requirements of the DUS test, which tells us that in order to be registered, a new variety must meet the technical requirements of being Distinct, Uniform and Stable. It must also meet two non-technical requirements such as being a novel variety and having an appropriate denomination.
In order to meet these requirements, field trials are carried out in which the variety to be registered is characterised and compared with other similar varieties to check compliance with the DUS requirements.
The characterisation of the varieties to be registered is a process that requires the definition of the characteristics to be assessed and the use of an appropriate scale of values for their evaluation. Since many of them are qualitative characteristics, it is necessary to have uniform criteria between different assessors. As the assessment, at the European level, can be carried out in different countries, with different personnel, this makes it difficult to interpret the established criteria and assessment that appear in the technical protocols of both UPOV and OPVO.
Calibration Books
In order to alleviate the difficulties in the assessment of the characteristics under study, the Inspection Service for Horticulture in the Netherlands (Naktuinbouw) has developed a series of manuals under the name of “Calibration Books”.
These “Calibration Books” are based on the guidelines and protocols of UPOV and OPVO and have the added advantage of containing a series of photographs illustrating the assessment of the different assessable characteristics. They are therefore a very practical tool to carry out the evaluation activities in a very uniform way between different evaluators and in different trials.
On the Naktuinbouw website you can find and download the “Calibration Books” for different species, including vegetable crops, bulbs, ornamentals and potatoes.
Examples of characteristics defined in the calibration books are the degree of roughness in cucumber, the depth of the ridging in melon, the intensity of the colour of pepper fruit, the degree of ridging of tomato fruit or the colour of watermelon seed, to name but a few examples of vegetable crops.
Interés de Interest of calibration books in genetic improvement
As mentioned above, the registration of a variety is a necessary process prior to the commercialisation of a new variety. In order to meet all the requirements for registration, a series of official trials must be carried out to characterise and compare the new variety. The calibration book is an ideal tool to carry out the characterisation of the new variety in a suitable way regardless of the assessor or the area where it is carried out.
On the other hand, calibration books can facilitate the process of characterising the plant material of a breeding programme, this would allow to have a range of standard values between different breeder and different breeding programmes within the same company. Using the criteria present in the calibration books, with the same categories of values, would subsequently facilitate the completion of the necessary documentation for the registration of varieties.
There is no doubt that calibration books can be a very useful tool for a plant breeder, especially when starting a new breeding programme in which the breeder has no previous experience.
References
Calibration books for vegetables crops. Link.
Calibration books for bulbs. Link.
Calibration books for ornamental crops. Link.
Calibration books for potatoes. Link.
UPOV guidelines for registration. Link.
European Variety Registration Office. Link.
CPVO technical protocols. Link.
