Geneva, October 18, 2011
Secretary General of CIOPORA asks UPOV to define the key-term “propagating material” in a harmonized and sufficiently broad way.
In the last meeting of the UPOV CAJ-AG (CAJ-Advisory Group), the Secretary General of CIOPORA asked UPOV to define the key-term “propagating material” in a harmonized and sufficiently broad way.
Basis for the request was a study of the UPOV office about the definitions of “propagation” and “propagating material” in the PBR laws of 39 out of the 70 UPOV members. The study confirmed the findings of CIOPORA in its previous study of the PBR laws of 12 UPOV members, namely that the definitions of “propagating material” in many cases deviate significantly from each other. Additionally, the UPOV study showed that only 4 out of 39 PBR-laws include a definition of “propagation”, although in 21 out of the 39 laws the term “propagation” is used.
In general one can classify the definitions into four groups:
- 15 out of the 39 countries [1] plus the EU have implemented a rather broad definition of “propagating material”. In general, these countries consider “plants or parts of plants, from which another plant with the same characteristics can be produced” as propagating material.
- 9 out of the 39 countries[2] have implemented a very narrow concept of propagating material. In general these countries consider only “plants or parts of plants intended or used for the reproduction or multiplication of plants” as propagating material.
- 9 out of the 39 countries[3] use a definition which includes at least “plants or parts thereof intended for the cultivation (growing, planting or sowing)”.
- 4 countries[4] use a definition which says: “plants or parts of plants intended/designated for the propagation” without providing a definition of “propagation”.
CIOPORA suggested that UPOV develops a standard definition of propagation and propagating material, which the UPOV members should implement into their national PBR laws. Such standard definition should determine that any plant or part of a plant from which another plant with the same characteristics can be produced is propagating material.
FOOTNOTES
1. Australia, Canada, the European Union, Hungary, Mexico, Rep. of Moldova, Morocco, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Romania, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, Tunisia, Ukraine.↑
2. Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, Panama, Russian Federation, Turkey.↑
3. Argentina, Austria, Germany, Israel, Netherlands, Paraguay, Poland, Rep. of Korea, Switzerland.↑
4. Georgia, Kenya, Lithuania, Slovakia.↑
