New arrangements for National Listing of crop varieties, now confirmed by Defra, will help strengthen the relevance and effectiveness of variety evaluation, and keep spiralling costs in check by reducing the scope for unnecessary or duplicated trials work.

The British Society of Plant Breeders has welcomed the UK Testing Authorities' decision to move towards a more integrated system of variety testing and recommendation, with National List tests limited to the minimum required by EU legislation.

Trial sites, to be managed by BSPB under licence from the UK Testing Authorities, will be dual purpose, generating data not only for NL decisions but also for use by variety evaluation organisations in preparing their Descriptive or Recommended Lists. BSPB already has a proven track record in conducting officially licensed National List trials, managed to defined protocols and subject to independent audit and validation.

Initially, the new arrangements will apply this year to trials of spring-sown oats and peas. For the first time, this will mean a consistent set of trial protocols used to produce information for National List decisions by the UK National Authorities and Recommended List decisions by CEL (oats) and PGRO (peas). This will pave the way for similar changes to be introduced across all the major crop species.

"BSPB has long argued that the current system is too expensive, over-elaborate and not flexible enough to meet changing industry requirements," said BSPB operations manager Penny Maplestone. "Last year we issued a stark warning that investment by plant breeders would switch out of Britain unless radical measures were taken to rein in the costs of plant variety testing and registration. For some, these reforms have unfortunately come too late.

"However, we are pleased that the Testing Authorities have taken this opportunity to strip out excessive costs and red tape, and create the basis for a more cost-effective, commercially relevant and technically robust system going forward.

"While these changes do not go as far as BSPB proposed, we estimate that the costs of variety testing and evaluation will be reduced by around a third. That will play an important part in ensuring UK-based breeding programmes are maintained, and that UK farmers can respond to the huge changes facing our agricultural industry with improved varieties tailored to our specific climatic, agronomic and end-use demands. We look forward to cost reductions in the future as the new system extends to encompass more crops, confident that there is potential to achieve these savings without loss to the integrity or value of the trials," said Dr Maplestone.

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