2024 Meeting of European Agricultural DUS Experts

The CPVO’s Agricultural Plant Experts held their annual meeting at the beginning of October, in virtual session. GEVES was able to present the latest developments in France concerning the DUS of field crop species.

GEVES presented the latest news concerning the consideration of applications for registration or protection of wheat hybrids produced with a cytoplasmic male sterility system, which are increasing at national level, and proposed changes to the homogeneity thresholds in the light of experience gained.

GEVES also reported on the national DUS characteristics observed in spring barley DUS, and offered to host a workshop in 2025 for DUS examiners from the various European examination offices to discuss spring barley DUS issues. These national characteristics and additional characteristics can make it easier to distinguish between varieties.

GEVES also presented its management of varieties that have lost all official status, in connection with the concept of varieties of common knowledge, and this presentation sparked a debate between experts from different countries. GEVES also gave a presentation on the difficulties encountered in distinguishing forage and grass species, and the actions proposed by France will be followed up next year.

Ongoing R&D projects were also discussed, providing BioGEVES with an opportunity to explain the latest advances in the SNPsNAP project, which aims to improve the efficiency of rapeseed DUS studies.

Finally, the soybean, oilseed rape, sunflower and forage turnip DUS protocols, all currently being revised, were discussed with the close involvement of GEVES DUS examiner colleagues, who put forward their expertise on the characteristics to be observed and the methods associated with these observations.