ABSTRACT
The regulatory system in many countries, particularly in the European Union, restricts the varieties available to farmers to those registered in an official catalogue (National or European). In the EU, to be commercialized, a variety has to be registered in the European catalogue and meet evaluation criteria including “distinctiveness, uniformity and stability” (DUS). Further regulations for variety registration vary by country but usually include “value for cultivation and use” standards that measure agronomic performance and technical end-use quality in conventional systems. This has resulted in a lack of suitable varieties available to organic farmers, since most modern varieties are developed for and tested in highinput conventional cropping systems. Thus, many farmers using organic
and low-input methods are unable to find a variety in the catalogue that is adapted to their agricultural environment. The vast majority (over 95%) of varieties used in organic agriculture were initially bred for conventional systems [1].
