In the UK, new seed varieties are listed through a process that includes both a UK National List and Plant Breeders' Rights (PBR).
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To be placed on the market, a seed variety must be added to the GB or NI Variety List and is assessed for Distinctness, Uniformity, and Stability (DUS), as well as Value for Cultivation and Use (VCU).
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Breeder applications are made online through UPOV PRISMA, and processed by the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA). ​The new variety is tested to ensure it is distinct from other varieties, uniform in its characteristics, and stable across generations. ​For agricultural crops, trials are conducted to determine the variety's suitability for cultivation and use.
Inter-departmental Technical Committees review the test results and determine if the variety meets the criteria for national listing. ​If the variety meets the criteria, a proposal to add it to the UK National List is published in the Seeds Gazette. Once added to the GB or NI Variety List, the seed variety can be marketed in Great Britain or Northern Ireland. ​
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The cost involves not only the plant breeding, but also the associated trials and the application fees. A promising variety can fail an assessment simply because of the particular weather conditions or location where the variety is assessed.
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It's therefore not surprising that out of the thousands of new lines being bred each year, just a handful are taken forward for assessment and of those, perhaps only one or two will make it onto the seed listing.
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Organic farmers and those interesting in minimising their reliance upon inputs derived from fossil fuels are particularly poorly served by this system as the assessment reflects mainstream farming practice.
Alternative approaches to plant breeding
Alternative grain and seed networks also provide opportunities for those plant breeders who are engaged in some very useful and interesting work but whose contributions otherwise be excluded from ever reaching a grower's fields due tot he enormous costs and time involved in the varieties listing process.
Farmer Selections
Historically, farmer selections have played an important part in selecting the strongest and most resilient crops.
Most agricultural grain crops like wheat, barley and oats, are mostly self-pollenating however, a very small percentage will cross with other plants of the same species that are in close proximity.
Although the incidence of this is relatively rare, they can often be spotted to the experienced eye within a field where millions of plants co-exist. Farmers interested in developing new lines will select these and use the grains to begin a process of bulking up a viable seed crop.
Machinery such as a gravity separator or a protein sorter can also be used to select particularly "bold" and productive grains and many farmers will still use this technique to improve their farm-saved seed.
Support for Plant Breeders
Seed legislation in the UK was introduced primarily to protect the work of plant breeders. By successfully registering a variety they can be recompensed by royalty payments that are collected by the British Society of Plant Breeders.
However, since the costs of registering a new variety are prohibitively expensive to all but the largest plant breeding concerns, they are similarly excluded from this system of support. ​LASN's encourage the adoption of a levy paid on all harvested produce that is sold for human consumption.
This is a very simple process to administer, particularly through the use of the HeteroGen facility. The revenue from this helps to support the vital field trial work and also the commercial testing of pilot batches within their intended commercial markets. ​
We believe that the assessment of the potential of a new population or variety is of far greater value that the simple "VCU" testing, because it takes into consideration a range of nuanced criteria ranging from sensory values such as taste, through to agronomic resilience across a wide range of "real life" farming conditions.