Abstract
Breeders persistently supply farmers with the best varieties in order to exceed consumer demand through plant-breeding processes that are resource-intensive. In order to motivate continuous innovation in variety development, a system needs to provide incentives for plant breeders to develop superior varieties, for example, exclusive ownership to produce and market those varieties. The most common system is the acquisition of intellectual property protection through plant variety protection, also known as the breeder’s right. Most countries have adopted the system established by the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV). To be granted plant variety protection, the variety should prove to be unique by meeting three requirements: distinctness, uniformity, and stability. This review summarizes (1) the plant variety protection via UPOV convention, (2) technical methods for distinctness, uniformity, and stability testing via phenotype, molecular markers, and sequencing as well as their challenges and potentiality, and (3) additional discussions in essentially derived variety, value for cultivation and use testing, and open source seed initiative.
Highlights
Plant varieties can be improved for numerous agronomic reasons, such as better yields, quality, and resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses
Crop varieties are derived through plant breeding by mating two or more parental lines that contain desirable characteristics, and the target characteristics are measured over multiple generations under different environmental conditions
Within the UPOV’s Plant variety protection (PVP) framework, all members acknowledge breeders of new varieties of plants by granting them intellectual property rights based on the following conditions: distinctness (D) from existing varieties, uniformity (U) of relevant characteristics tics that depend on reproduction the reproduction system of the species, stability in expression that depend on the system of the species, andand stability (S) (S)
Summary
Plant varieties can be improved for numerous agronomic reasons, such as better yields, quality, and resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses. Individuals with desirable characteristics are selected, whereas individuals with undesired characteristics are eliminated from the breeding process. A commercial corn breeder in the US typically screens approximately 1000 individuals to generate 10–15 individuals in order to introgress the desired characteristic into one competitive genetic background. A breeder usually introgresses several characteristics into multiple backgrounds that have adapted to different environmental conditions This process can result in the screening of hundreds of thousands of individual plants that are grown in hundreds of different environments [3]. Breeding new varieties is a resource-intensive activity in terms of costs, infrastructure, genetic resources, and the breeders’ knowledge and experience. Such options motivate breeders and support further breeding activities that constantly provide farmers with the best varieties that satisfy consumer demand [3,4,6,7]
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