A national seed growers group sees benefit rather than peril in changes proposed to the system for registering new crop varieties.
The National Farmers Union went public this month with concerns that proposed changes to the system could allow companies to register candidate varieties with less scrutiny while further limiting farmers’ ability to use common seed.
The NFU’s concerns were driven mainly by a proposal to extend the boundaries of contract registration, a mechanism for registering varieties that have desired traits but need to be segregated from mainstream crop production and handling.
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However, the executive director of the Canadian Seed Growers Association said the current rules for contract registration are too restrictive and stifle innovation in crop production.
Dale Adolphe rejected suggestions that proposed changes will result in most new varieties being approved under contract registration rather than under the more conventional method of reviewing a potential variety’s merits before deciding whether to grant registration.
“Everybody, including ourselves, want to make sure that the new contract registration system doesn’t just become an instrument that allows the developers to go around the variety registration system,” Adolphe said. “That’s not the intention.”
Under the proposed rules for contract registration, a variety would be reviewed by a committee to assess the risk of allowing its production and to decide what restrictions should be applied. Such a variety typically would need to be grown in a so-called closed loop system to ensure its segregation from the production and handling of mainstream crops.
“I think that contract registration is still going to be the exception rather than the norm,” said Adolphe.
He agreed with the NFU that producers who want to grow crops under contract registration would most likely have to use certified seed to ensure the product was what the end user wanted and was paying a premium for.
“If you’re going to go after niche markets on a variety specific basis, you need to know that it’s that variety, and you do that through the use of certified seed.”
