Aralia elata (Miq.) Seem. (the Korean angelica tree) is a popular wild spring vegetable crop in East Asia. Owing to its ease of cultivation and harvesting from the second year after planting, this species is a promising forest crop for short-term income. However, the presence of prickles on the stems and shoots reduces harvesting efficiency and negatively affects product quality. This study reports the breeding and morphological characteristics of a new prickle-less cultivar, ‘Seochun’, which exhibits strong cold tolerance and early sprouting. Among the 192 native accessions collected across Korea, a superior prickle-less and cold-tolerant clone was selected and evaluated over two years (2019-2020) of field trials. The stems of ‘Seochun’ were completely smooth and prickle-less, with a larger basal diameter (40.0 mm) compared to the control (29.7 mm). The sprouting and harvesting times were approximately seven days earlier than those of the control. As an early harvest and prickle-less cultivar of A. elata, ‘Seochun’ is expected to improve both the shoot productivity and labor efficiency during harvesting and cutback operations (Research support number: 375).

The plant variety protection system (PVP), which started in 1968 to protect the rights of breeders, was first launched in Korea in 1998 with 27 species, including rice and barley. In 2008, the forest sector started the PVP system, which was later than the agricultural sector, and included 15 species of chestnut, oak mushroom, etc. It was then extended to all plants species in 2012. The new plant variety protection system protects the rights of the breeder for a new variety when it has novelty, denomination, distinctness, uniformity, and stability. In the past decade, a total of 424 new varieties of forest plant applications have been filed, and 193 new varieties have been registered. The number of applications of new varieties has increased every year, with 18 new varieties applied in the early stages of the forest sector’s PVP system, and 20~30 new varieties are registered each year. In the early stages of the operation of the PVP system, the central and local governments mainly took the applications (82 applications), but recently, due to consulting, promotion of the PVP system and support of breeders, applications to the private sector, such as individual breeders and the seed industry have increased (107 applications). The National Forest Seed Variety Center (NFSV) publishes Test Guidelines (292 books) and DUS test manuals (7 books), and conducts the “PVP system information session” every year of the PVP system settlement. NFSV will continue to implement policies for protecting the rights of breeders and the development of the bio-industry sector. These efforts provide a new provision against the Nagoya Protocol Paradigm with the promotion of the forest bio-industry.

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.

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.