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Getting DUS and Performance Testing in Shape for Next Phase

 

Agriculture is increasingly being urged to reduce its dependency on external inputs, lower its environmental footprint and cope with more variable climatic conditions. So, it should come as no surprise that plant breeders have taken up the baton and have started to breed for those characteristics that contribute to crop resilience to biotic and abiotic stresses, in fact that already started a long time ago. The next challenge is to find criteria and methods to test and make value of the performances of those new plant varieties under conditions that are associated with sustainable and more variable farming practices.

Improve Variety Testing

The newly awarded INVITE project aims to address these issues by improving both the efficiency of variety testing and availability of information to stakeholders on variety performance under a range of production conditions and biotic and abiotic stresses. One expected impact is to help introduce plant traits that respond to new challenges and demands in the conventional and organic sectors, while also considering the economic return of growers.

The Community Plant Variety Office (CPVO) is one of the initiators of the consortium together with a handful of other institutions involved in variety testing. To get a better view on this project, European Seedtalked with Martin Ekvad, President at the CPVO; Anne Weitz, Technical expert Agricultural species (CPVO) and Cécile Collonnier, Expert biomolecular techniques (CPVO) [...]

 

Read complete article published on European Seed Website