Eighteen years have passed since Korea introduced plant variety protection (PVP) system. Korea is being considered as one of the countries which introduced PVP system successfully. However, there have been lots of changes in circumstances surrounding PVP system during this period. Regarding future direction of PVP system in Korea, firstly the function and role of three organizations which now independently operate PVP system need to be reorganized to improve efficiency in PVP operation dealing with global issues. Secondly, authorities need to devise more user-oriented application form and process. This is because breeders feel some difficulties in preparing application documents. Thirdly, Korea has to create sound environments which guarantee effective enforcement of breeders’ rights and secure reliability of the system against infringement. Regarding decision of infringement, a reasonable threshold should be set up to decide whether certain varieties are different from protected varieties or not using both growing test and DNA test. For essentially derived varieties (EDV), authorities need to establish a reasonable threshold to decide whether there is an essential derivation or not. In addition, to prevent dispute between PVP holders and farmers regarding the use of farm saved seeds in the future, clarification of farm saved seed article in legislation is necessary. Lastly, there might be some contradiction between PVP and Nagoya protocol in disclosure of origin, prior informed consent, benefit sharing, etc. In advance of enactment of domestic ABS law, authority needs to study impact of Nagoya protocol on PVP system to minimize confusion and damage on breeders.
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Community Plant Variety Rights (CPVR) system was introduced in 1995 in European Union. This right guarantees the exclusive exploitation rights for a plant variety and is effective in 28 EU member states through a single application to the Community Plant Variety Office (CPVO). The legal basis for the CPVR system is found in the Council Regulation (EC) No 2100/94 (the Basic Regulation). The scope of protection in the Basic Regulation is extended in the same way in UPOV 1991 convention. However, the protection of harvested material is not sufficiently well-defined in the Basic Regulation resulting in uncertainties and loopholes in the CPVR. By exceptions to the breeder’s right provision, farmers may save seed for some species provided that they pay an appropriate royalty to rights’ holder which is lower than that of equivalent certified seed. CPVR holders currently find it difficult to obtain royalties for farm saved seed (FSS) use, in part due to the difficulty in requesting information from farmers. The provision for ‘Essentially Derived Varieties’ (EDVs) helps to protect against plagiarism of plant varieties that are too similar to one another. However, there is no standardized protocol or threshold developed by CPVO to determine EDVs. The CPVR law provides a harmonized intellectual property regime for plant varieties at EU level, but enforcement varies widely in practice in Member States. And in some cases dispute resolution mechanisms are not easily accessible. This is considered to be one of the biggest problems inhibiting an effective EU-wide plant variety rights system.
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This study was conducted to construct a DNA marker database for 38 plum varieties collected in Korea using simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. A set of 61 SSR primer pairs was tested to select polymorphic SSR markers between 8 varieties. Among the 61 primer pairs, 21 showed polymorphism, reproducibility and easy scoring. The genetic relationship between the 21 SSR markers and 38 varieties was analyzed. A total of 210 polymorphic amplified fragments were obtained with the 21 SSR markers. Three to seventeen SSR alleles were detected for each locus, with an average of 10.0 alleles per locus. Average polymorphism information content (PIC) was 0.758, with a range from 0.549 to 0.870. A total of 210 SSR marker loci were used to calculate Jaccard’s distance coefficients for cluster analysis by an unweighted pair-group method with arithmetical average (UPGMA). The genetic distance ranged from 0.06 to 1.00 in 38 varieties. Out of 38 plum varieties, 32 were identified using the 21 SSR markers. Therefore, these SSR markers may be employed to complement distinctness, uniformity, and stability (DUS) tests or as potential tools to solve seed disputes regarding plums.
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