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 6848 I EUROPEAN SEED I EUROPEAN-SEED.COM to serve as a platform for public discussion on the importance and innovative power of plant breeding. The foundation’s mission is, among others, to give credit to and to raise public awareness of outstanding merits in plant breeding. The Gregor Mendel Award is awarded to personalities who have actively contributed to the promotion of science or to the preservation of breeding diversity. In April 2015 in Berlin, the Gregor Mendel Foundation awarded the Gregor Mendel Innovation Prize to Mahmoud Solh. The director-general of the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) was honoured on behalf of his team for their commitment to the rescue of plant genetic resources from the gene bank during the political unrest in Syria, making it possible to save the gene bank and to send duplicates of all seed samples to various gene banks around the world despite the difficult conditions prevailing during the civil war there, and so to preserve these unique resources for future generations of scientists and plant breeders. SPOTLIGHT: GERMAN PLANT BREEDERS’ ASSOCIATION BDP climatic conditions. Mahmoud Solh and his team have been able to rescue the cultural legacy in Syria. The matchless achievement of having saved 150,000 samples of seeds had to be made known to the general public. KEY CONCERNS OF GERMAN PLANT BREEDERS One of the key missions of the German Plant Breeders’ Association is to represent the interests of the plant breeding industry in politics and administration. With a view to the general elections of the Federal Diet in 2017, the plant breeders state their urgent requests for a framework that creates optimized conditions for plant breeding. Plant variety protection and breeding exemption stimulate innovation and must remain the primary form of intellectual property rights in plant breeding. The German Patent Act limits patent protection to technical inventions. This creates a clear distinction, which should be harmonized within the European Union. The current legislation on farm saved seed royalty collection is unfair both to plant breeders and farmers and needs to be revised as soon as possible. This will also contribute to the plant breeders‘ future ability to continue their investments into research and development. The access to plant genetic resources must remain unrestricted. Systems that ensure free access — e.g. the International Treaty of the FAO — are to be enforced. Plant breeders demand a pragmatic interpretation http://www.bdp-online.de Peter Harry Carstensen, former state premier and president of the Board of Trustees of the Gregor Mendel Foundation (left) and Hans-Joachim Fuchtel, State Secretary of Germany’s Ministry of Economic cooperation and Development (right) awarded the Gregor Mendel Innovation Prize to Mahmoud Solh (middle) and his team for rescuing plant genetic resources from Syria. of t he EU reg u l at ion i mplement i n g the Nagoya Protocol by the competent authorities, accounting for the specific situation of plant breeding. For the benefit of the world population, an exchange in plant genetic resources must remain possible. The documentation requirements incumbent on plant breeders are disproportionate, undermine the breeding exemption and jeopardize biological diversity. Both on EU-level as in public discourse, we need a rational approach to new techniques in the plant breeding toolbox. Based on current legislation, politicians need to pave the way so that new breeding techniques can be used in practical breeding in the nearest future and without legal risks. Disproportionate regulation of the new techniques will cause a drain of scientists, know-how and companies to countries outside the EU where often the utilization of these new tools is already possible. The time-consuming public and private research activities require a comprehensive long- term (i.e. continued for up to 15 years) research funding for this industry. This also includes pre-competitive research. The social relevance of plant breeding must find its correspondence in an appropriate and purposeful commitment of politics and public authority. “Plant variety protection and breeding exemption stimulate innovation and must remain the primary form of intellectual property rights in plant breeding.” G er m a ny ’s fe der a l m i n i s t er of agriculture, Christian Schmidt, praised the actions of the ICARDA team. He emphasized that gene banks are not museums of the history of plants, but instead form the basis for further development through breeding and agriculture. The gene bank of ICARDA comprises one of the biggest collections in the world for barley, faba beans and lentils, and also for old types of hard and soft wheat. This collection is a unique resource for international breeding programs for the development of varieties that are tolerant of drought and resistant to diseases and pests, and which can also grow under changing