Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68EUROPEAN-SEED.COM I EUROPEAN SEED I 47 ensure adequate benefits from the breeders’ achievements by safeguarding his intellectual property rights. As in many other specialities, this protection of intellectual property is vital to re-finance the expensive research and development that is needed to develop a new plant variety. The plant breeding community has joined forces to set up an organisation entrusted with safeguarding these protection rights — the Saatguttreuhandverwaltungs- GmbH (ST V ) is acti n g on beha l f of approximately 50 plant breeding companies to enforce plant variety protection rights. The Sortenförderungsgesellschaft mbH (SFG) is a 100-per-cent subsidiary of BDP. SFG organises and facilitates statutory and evaluation trials of plant varieties. SFG organises VCU testing on behalf of the German Plant Variety Office. In this function, SFG co-ordinates the provision of trial field plots by plant breeding companies and their subsequent remuneration for this service. The results of these trials are the basis for the decision of the German Plant Variety Office whether a plant variety will be listed in the German Plant Variety Catalogue (a pre-requisite for the marketing of seeds of this plant variety). The data are also used for the Recommended Plant Variety List. GLOBAL RESPONSIBILTIES As member of the European Seed Association ( ESA), the Ger ma n Pla nt Breeders’ Association contributes to voicing the interests of the seed industry in EU politics to the European Parliament, the European Commission and the Council of the EU. The International Seed Federation (ISF), seated in Nyon, Switzerland, is dealing with worldwide developments on the seed market. Via the members of the German Plant Breeders’ Association who also are represented by a national office in Brussels, our members are active contributors in numerous bodies of ESA and ISF. The German Plant Breeders’ Association sets up internal working groups in order to quickly inform its members on international developments and to voice German positions in international negotiations, e.g. in talks with the Food and A griculture Organization of the United Nations; International Seed Testing Association; Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development; United Nations Organization; and the International Union for Protection of New Varieties of Plants. SOCIAL COMMITMENT The plant breeding industr y and its professional representation are particularly committed to actively contributing to public discourse. In 2002, a number of family- owned German plant breeding companies set up the Gregor Mendel Foundation as a public benefit organization. Its objective is STEPHANIE FRANCK, PRESIDENT Franck was born in Stuttgart, Germany, and studied agricultural sciences at the University of Hohenheim from 1987 to 1992, followed by research projects at the Universities of Zürich, Kassel and Göttingen as well as at the Max Planck Institute for International Law in Heidelberg. She entered the family-owned plant breeding company Pflanzenzucht Oberlimpurg in Schwäbisch-Hall in 2006 and took on the position of shareholding managing director. The company develops cereal varieties for the European and international market. In April 2013, Stephanie Franck was elected president of the German Plant Breeders’ Association and vice-president of the German Federation for Plant Innovation (Gemeinschaft zur Förderung von Pflanzeninnovation, GFPi). She has been a member of the board of directors of the German Plant Breeders’ Association since 2007 and chairwoman of the BDP Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights since 2009. In 2010, she became a member of the Committee on Intellectual Property Rights (CIPR) of the European Seed Association (ESA). CARL-STEPHAN SCHÄFER, SECRETARY-GENERAL Schäfer, born in 1966 in Göttingen, Germany, studied agriculture at Bonn University. He earned his PhD in agricultural sciences in 1997. From 1998 to 1999, he was secretary-general of the Association of Beef Cattle Breeders in Schleswig Holstein. From 1999 until 2003, he worked as technical officer at the German Cattle Breeders Federation, and from April 2003 until December 2009 as its secretary-general. In 2010, he took office as secretary-general of the German Plant Breeders’ Association (BDP e.V.) and as vice-secretary- general of the German Federation of Private Plant Breeding Research. Since 2009, he is vice-CEO of the German Export Association for Food and Agriproducts GEFA e.V.