Plant Variety Protection (PVP) Board Teleconference Meeting Minutes – April 27, 2017 

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USDA Plant Variety Protection Office (PVPO) 

Room 3543, USDA South Building 

1400 Independence Ave. S.W. 

Washington, DC 20250 

Board Members attending (with affiliation): 

Charles Brown, Brownseed Genetics, LLC 

Joonhyung Cho, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 

Eloy Corona, Bayer Crop Science LP 

Emily Dierking, Indiana Crop Improvement Association 

John Duesing, DuPont Pioneer 

Elizabeth Lee, University of Guelph 

Stevan Madjarac, Monsanto Company 

Jose Re, RiceTec, Inc. 

Wendell Shauman, Shauman Farms 

Bernice Slutsky, American Seed Trade Association (ASTA) 

Alternate: James Sutton, Georgia Department of Agriculture 

Absent: 

Jianli Chen 

Jose Costa 

Danielle Conway 

Katherine White 

Alternate: David Burns 

USDA and AMS staff: 

Ruihong Guo, Deputy Administrator, USDA/AMS/Science and Technology 

Douglas Keeler, Associate Deputy Administrator, USDA/AMS/S&T 

Paul Zankowski, Commissioner PVPO 

Jeff Haynes, Deputy Commissioner, PVPO 

Others Attending: 

Steve Bent 

Alice Bonnen, Attorney, Myers Sigel, PA 

Amy Curtis, Germplasm Patent Scientist, Monsanto 

Steve Davies, AgriPulse 

Ann de St Remy, Agriculture/Canada 

Carolyn Gray 

Chris Hannon, Patent Attorney, US Patent & Trademark Office (PTO) 

Leah Houg, Plant Variety Protection Specialist, Syngenta Seeds 
Plant Variety Protection (PVP) Board Teleconference Meeting Minutes – April 27, 2017 

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David Holm, Professor of Horticulture, Colorado State University 

Katherine Koenig, Patent Attorney, Christopher & Weisberg Law Firm 

Corinne Marshall, Sakata Seed Company 

Minna Moezie, Patent Attorney, US PTO 

Paul Nelson, Monsanto 

Mike Pink, Purification Coordinator, Monsanto 

Berry Treat, Director Office for Commercialization & Corporate Development 

Oregon State University 

Albert Tsui, Patent Attorney, Washington State University 

Call to Order and Introduction 

The meeting agenda was adopted. The three main functions of the Board were 

discussed – 1) advising the Secretary regarding the Plant Variety Protection Office’s 

(PVPO) Rules and Regulations, 2) making advisory decisions on all appeals to the 

Secretary, and 3) advising the Secretary on all questions regarding public usage of the 

varieties. The PVPO has also used the Board’s assistance by asking for their advice on 

PVPO procedural matters. 

Topics from the Board members 

A Board member reported feedback from the seed industry on the lack of PVP 

protection for asexually propagated plants and the value of exploring a minor change to 

the PVPA to eliminate this gap. A question was proposed to the Board “Should the 

PVPA be amended to allow asexually propagated varieties to be protected?” Following 

further discussion the Board approved a motion for a recommendation to be drafted 

about the PVPA change and emailed to all Board members for discussion and 

commenting. 

The following recommendation was drafted and approved by email correspondence: 

“The Plant Variety Protection Board recommends pursuing the expansion of the Plant 

Variety Protection Act to include asexually reproduced plants. The Board does not 

identify any other necessary modifications to the Plant Variety Protection Act at this 

time.” 

PVP Office Update 

The PVPO received 198 new applications year to date in FY2017. 165 applications 

were examined and processed with an average processing time of less than 1.4 years. 

103 certificates were issued year to date. The current unprocessed inventory is 302 

applications. The Board asked if many new corn applications were received this year – 

60 corn applications were received to date compared to 9 corn for all of FY2016. 
Plant Variety Protection (PVP) Board Teleconference Meeting Minutes – April 27, 2017 

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UPOV Meetings 

A report of the April 2017 UPOV meeting was made. At that session it was decided that 

there will only be one fall UPOV meeting per year from here forward with the 

March/April meeting being eliminated. The UPOV electronic application form (EAF) was 

launched in January 2017 with low usage by applicants therefore there has been 

discussion about reducing UPOV’s fee charged to encourage more use. The concept of 

the International System of Cooperation was discussed at a working group meeting with 

the plan for current member state cooperation to be discussed at a fall 2017 meeting. 

The concept of how best to determine varieties of common knowledge was discussed 

because there is increasing challenge for UPOV members to know the whole universe 

of all varieties – there is a plan to look into UPOV member’s variety databases with 

possible collaboration among members. There was also a UPOV discussion on what 

constitutes propagating material and a revision of the EDV explanatory notes was 

adopted. 

The UPOV Technical Working Party for Agricultural Crops (TWA) will be held in 

Hanover, Germany in June 2017 and will be attended by the PVPO. Revisions of 

UPOV technical guidelines for soybean will be discussed at this meeting. Other UPOV 

meetings to be attended by the PVPO include the fall general session and the 

Biomolecular Technique meeting in France during November 2017. 

ePVP Update 

The PVPO is on track for release of the ePVP later this year. The last eight crops 

(Corn, Oat, Barley, Wheat, Rapeseed, Triticale, Tomato and Rice) have been 

implemented and added to the ePVP system. Fifty five crops are now available for data 

entry and examination. Testing of the online portal has been conducted with several 

applicants and several new applications were submitted successfully. 

The PVPO is requesting that applicants who are e-authenticated submit new 

applications using the system. The PVPO will put an ePVP link on its website but users 

must be e-authenticated first. 

The ePVP contractor is fixing previous crops for minor issues to be completed by June 

2017. The first applicant/customer training webinar is planned for June and will be 

announced by GovDelivery. Ongoing internal user training is conducted every other 

Tuesday. 

With the portal enhancements scheduled for May – the system will be ready for the 

submission of all crops. The bulk upload application feature will be added later in the 
Plant Variety Protection (PVP) Board Teleconference Meeting Minutes – April 27, 2017 

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summer. Additional applicant/customer training opportunities will become available 

through the summer. 

The Board asked if the UPOV EAF is running and what is the integration process into 

the ePVP - the PVPO can receive EAF’s XML code that can be imported into the ePVP 

in a future version. The Board asked what additional crops will be added to UPOV EAF 

– UPOV plans to offer all crops in the future – the PVPO would provide its questionnaire 

to UPOV as a prioritized list. 

2017-2019 PVP Board 

The PVP Board charter was renewed on January 11, 2017. The term for the 2015-2017 

Board expires on May 26, 2017. A slate of candidates for the 2017-2019 Board will be 

presented to the Secretary in June. There is a plan for the first physical meeting of the 

2017-2019 Board to be held on the Monday of the ASTA Corn Sorghum and Soybean 

meeting in Chicago during December 2017. 

Joint Molecular Marker Working Group (MMWG) Update 

The concept of morphologically indistinguishable varieties was discussed (previously 

termed morphological ties). This occurs when the PVPO determines that variety B is 

morphologically indistinguishable from existing variety A, i.e. they look the same. 

Molecular markers (MM) could potentially be used as supplementary evidence in a 

pairwise comparison to distinguish variety A from B. The question arises about “How 

close is too close?” and justifies the need for a threshold. This has given rise to naming 

this as the Threshold Model. 

This technique has shown MM error rates that are very low thus allowing for a clearer 

determination of the difference between 2 varieties. While there is high confidence in 

MM data, it is necessary to determine the error rate of genotyping. The MMWG is 

investigating error rates based on potential variety sampling and genotyping errors. 

ASTA has agreed to fund $15,000 of this project in addition to in-kind support from 

some seed companies. 

The MMWG is also conducting an empirical analysis of expired PVP germplasm for the 

similarity distribution among varieties. Other planned analyses included similarity 

distributions of PVP x PVP breeding populations and modeling genotype distributions. 

The MMWG’s highest priority is for the 1) Threshold model in soybean and 2) medium 

priority for this model with corn. The group is also looking at the previous Reference 

Variety Model (the EU has named this the “American model”) with medium priority in 

corn and low priority for soybean. 
Plant Variety Protection (PVP) Board Teleconference Meeting Minutes – April 27, 2017 

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MMWG future plans include 1) providing a Threshold model recommendation and 

building consensus within ASTA, 2) providing a Threshold model recommendation to 

the PVP Board, 3) developing a peer-review publication on the Threshold model, 4) 

engaging in UPOV to help shape UPOV direction, 5) presenting the Threshold model to 

UPOV at the Technical Committee, TWA, and BMT meetings, and 6) presenting an 

update on Reference variety (‘American’) model at BMT. 

Suggestions/Recommendations 

The Plant Variety Protection Board recommends pursuing the expansion of the 

Plant Variety Protection Act to include asexually reproduced plants. The Board 

does not identify any other necessary modifications to the Plant Variety 

Protection Act at this time. 

The Board meeting was adjourned.