Approaches to improve the determination of eligibility for plant variety protection: I evaluation of morphological characteristics

Abstract

The demonstration of distinctness through comparisons of morphological characteristics is an essential require¬ment in order to obtain Plant Variety Protection (PVP) and registration. Desires for increased international harmoni¬zation and the increasing size of reference collections place increased emphasis on improving the efficiency of the process. Morphological characteristics are notoriously affected by environment and many may be correlated in their expression. We developed an approach using inbred lines of maize (Zea mays L.) to evaluate characteristics according to their performance for 9 parameters encompassing 3 categories of Variability, Power and Genotype by Environment interaction. These data provide a basis for selecting a reduced core set of characteristics with the goal of retaining discriminational ability while decreasing the time and resources required to obtain and to compare morphologies.