LiveSeeding policy brief
This policy brief, produced within the LiveSeeding project and published by FiBL-Europe (April 2024, adjusted September 2024), examines the proposed EU Plant Reproductive Material (PRM) marketing regulation from the perspective of organic breeders and stakeholders. It assesses implications for Organic Varieties (OV), Organic Heterogeneous Material (OHM), conservation/amateur/diversity varieties, and proposed changes to testing and registration (DUS and the proposed Value for Sustainable Cultivation and Use — VSCU). The brief recommends keeping the Organic Regulation (2018/848) unchanged; preserving current access to OHM for all crop species and ensuring notification remains free of charge; promoting adjusted DUS and VCU/VSCU protocols conducted under organic or other sustainable cultivation systems; keeping VSCU optional for agricultural crops and not extending mandatory VSCU to vegetables and fruits; supporting frugal, decentralized post-registration on-farm testing networks; registering diversity varieties with low administrative burden and without geographic or packaging restrictions; prohibiting patented PRM and use of genetic engineering/new genomic techniques (NGTs) for OV, OHM and diversity varieties; ensuring transparency of breeding techniques and cultivar types; and involving organic stakeholders in delegated and implementing acts while reducing administrative burdens. The brief calls for public funding for voluntary testing and a multi-actor approach to harmonize registration and testing across Member States to support organic breeding, agrobiodiversity and the EU Green Deal targets.
Key topics: EU seed marketing, organic varieties, organic heterogeneous material (OHM), VSCU testing, DUS testing, patents and NGTs, seed policy
