A Framework for Financing Post-Registration Variety Testing System: A Case Study from Poland

Abstract

Agriculture is essential to ensuring food security and prosperity around the world. The importance of cultivating agricultural plant species cannot be overestimated. One of the key challenges faced by modern food producers is to increase efficiency while ensuring sustainability and improving resilience to unfavorable environmental conditions brought about by ongoing climate change. To meet these challenges, it is vital to continue breeding work and to select plant varieties best adapted to local farming conditions. Undoubtedly, future yield increases will only be achievable by way of genetic improvement. In turn, crop-variety recommendations should rely on the results of properly designed post-registration variety testing (PRVT, in polish PDO), followed up by specific variety recommendations for growers. In this article, we attempt to fill a gap in the international literature regarding post-registration variety testing. We present PRVT as a unique scheme that is key to selecting agricultural plant varieties recommended for cultivation, with due account taken of Poland’s specific farming conditions. Every year, over 1000 field cultivar tests are carried out as part of PRVT. The results of these tests constitute reliable, objective source material for farmers and help them make choices regarding the most valuable varieties for cultivation that are also best adapted to local farming conditions. Among the financial benefits of selecting the right crop varieties for agriculture are lower cultivation costs, including reduced fertilizer and pesticide spending, and higher income generated by larger yields.