In Europe landrace diversity is also threatened by the inadvertent consequences of the variety and seed certifcation system associated with the establishment of plant breeders’ rights, which remunerate seed companies for the costly process of creating modern cultivars. To be sold commercially, all major agricultural and vegetable crops grown in Europe need to be registered in the National Catalogues and then in the European Common Catalogue for agricultural and vegetable varieties, introduced in 1970 (Hutchinson in Hawkes 1978; Velvé 1992; Stickland 1998), following precise regulations. To be accepted onto the National List a variety has to meet the ‘DUS’ criteria: it has to be distinct (in character from any other variety in the ‘community’), unique (plants are similar or genetically identical in character) and stable (remains true to its defned characteristics after successive multiplications or propagations). The European and subsequent national legislation was intended to standardize crop names and protect both consumers and breeders, but has had the unintended consequence of drastically reducing the numbers of cultivars grown – there is a cost to DUS testing – and impinging on the ability of farmers to grow older varieties or landraces not present on the list. Although it is generally illegal to sell seed that is not on the national list, it is common for farmers to exchange their farm-reproduced seed. In addition, several European seed exchange networks, such as Garden Organic, Irish Seed Savers, Arche Noah and ProSpecieRara have found ways around the legislation in order to ensure the conservation of heritage varieties, but these organizations have primarily focused on vegetable or fruit landraces, not on larger- scale feld crops. But even for these, Velvé (1992) estimates that 1500 vegetable varieties representing 23 crops were immediately lost due to the requirement to register varieties prior to sale in the European Community. Although it is hoped that at least some of these varieties were placed in formal or informal sector genebanks or are still held by national variety statutory testing centres across Europe, it is unquestionable that a signifcant loss of European agro-biodiversity occurred, and much of the diversity has been lost in the form of traditional landraces, because of a sort of systematic eradication by government policy (Maxted 2006).
Posted on: Fri, 12 Sep 2014 21:18:24 +0000
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