North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Heron Breen <breen@fedcoseeds.com>]

Hello all,
There is another type of plant protection that applies to seed propagated 
plants, 
as opposed to vegatatively propagated woody types. This is called Plant 
Variety 
Protection, which is mainly used by individuals and companies to hold rights 
upon 
open-pollinated varieties. This type of protection is actually stronger in 
some 
ways than Plant Patents, and last longer: 22 years I think, as opposed to 17 
years. 
Yes, some hybrids are stable or near stable selections, but the inbred parent 
lines 
used as breeding parents can make selecting or attempting to stabilize a 
hybrid 
tricky in terms of keeping vigor and reducing inbreeding depression. That's 
why 
large amounts of plants (at least 300) should be used for initial selection 
from 
the F-1 generation if stabilization is the goal. The first few years see 
regressions and keeping gene pool oarge is even needed sometimes into year 3 
of 
stabilization. Be prepared for a 5 to 7 year effort, and prepare for at least 
slight variance for the hybrid original. 
Here is a website listing all the PVP plants in the trade:
http://www.ars-grin.gov/cgi-bin/npgs/html/pvplist.pl
Hope this helps,
Heron Breen
zone 4, Maine