Plant Variety Protection (PVP) Board Teleconference Meeting Minutes – August 6, 2015 

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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 

Jianli Chen; University of Idaho 

Joonhyung Cho; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 

Danielle Conway; University of Maine 

Eloy Corona; Bayer Crop Science LP 

Jose Costa; USDA/ARS 

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 

Katherine White; Wayne State University 

Alternate: David Burns, Burns' Farrns, Inc. 

Alternate: James Sutton, Georgia Department of Agriculture 

 

USDA and AMS staff: 

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

Douglas Keeler, Associate Deputy Administrator, USDA/AMS/Science and 

Technology 

Sharlene Deskins, Attorney, Office of General Counsel (OGC) 

Paul Zankowski; Commissioner PVPO 

Jeff Haynes, Deputy Commissioner, PVPO 

Others Attending: 

June Blalock, USDA Consultant 

Marymar Butruille, Monsanto 

Harry Collins, Farmer 

Rob Griesbach, USDA Office of Technology Transfer 

Paul Nelson, Monsanto 

Frank Michiels, Bayer 

Rachel Pilloff, Lowe Hauptman & Ham, LLP 
Plant Variety Protection (PVP) Board Teleconference Meeting Minutes – August 6, 2015 

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Call to Order, Opening Remarks, and Introductions 

Opening welcoming remarks were made by Paul Zankowski and Ruihong Guo. The 

meeting agenda was adopted. The 2015-2017 Board consists of 14 members and 2 

alternates with 4 members continuing from the 2013-2015 Board and 2 who were 

members of earlier Boards. 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 leveraged the Board by asking for their advice on PVPO procedural 

matters. 

Key Points about US PVP and the PVPO 

A briefing report was provided to the Board prior to the teleconference that described 

the US PVP system, intellectual property (IP) protection in the US, and the basics of the 

US Patent system. PVP encourages the development of new varieties of seed and 

tuber reproduced plants. Plant breeders provide information to the PVPO to show that 

their variety is new, distinct, uniform, and stable (DUS). The PVPO completes an 

examination to confirm the breeder’s results and makes a recommendation for issuing a 

PVP certificate. 

The PVPO is composed of 11 staff members – with 3 Examiners, 3 Associate 

Examiners, 2 Program Analyst, 1 Information Technology Specialist, 1 Deputy 

Commissioner, and 1 Commissioner – each having a specific role in PVP application 

processing. 

The Board was also provided with a report on the accomplishments of the PVPO for the 

first 9 months of fiscal year (FY) 2015. During this time the PVPO received 352 new 

applications, processed 367, and reduced processing time from 2.43 years in FY14 to 

1.8 years in FY15. The PVPO had $2.5 million in revenue with expenses of $2.2 million 

with the trust fund balance growing to $4.3 million (which is equivalent to 24 months 

operating reserve). The PVPO is required to be above 5 months of operating reserve. 

The Board asked if the operating reserve had improved from the past – it did since 

FY14 had a $3.9 million reserve. The Board also inquired if there were rules about how 

the PVPO’s budget is allocated and if there was an upper limit to the reserve – the 

PVPO’s budget allocation is flexible, the reserve didn't have a limit, and 24 months of 

reserve is considered healthy. The PVPO discussed reducing its application inventory 

and staff reduction as major factors to the PVPO’s financial health. It was also 

mentioned that the PVPO is solely dependent on incoming applications for revenue 
Plant Variety Protection (PVP) Board Teleconference Meeting Minutes – August 6, 2015 

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since it does not collect an annual maintenance fee that most other countries PVP 

offices do. 

The PVPO was active in 8 international outreach activities and 4 domestic events, in 

addition to traveling to 3 DUS trials to better understand plant breeders PVP challenges. 

The Board considered the PVPO’s participation in these events as very important to 

enhance the PVPO staff’s understanding of plant breeder issues as well allowing 

breeders to better comprehend the PVPO’s current perspective. 

ePVP Update 

The goal of the electronic PVP (ePVP) system is to completely replace the current 

STAR database system with Microsoft’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) 

software system. This would provide PVP stakeholders with an efficient electronic filing 

system and PVP staff with an effective electronic examination system. The basic ePVP 

system has been built but some fixes and enhancements to the external portal and 

internal CRM are needed. Also the data needs to be re-migrated from the legacy STAR 

database to the CRM system. The Board asked what does this mean for PVP 

applicants – the PVPO indicated applicants could submit their applications 

electronically, bulk upload applications, pay fees electronically, and receive certificates 

electronically too. 

The Board asked if this system would be compatible with International Union for the 

Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) electronic application system (EAS) – the 

PVPO responded that it was active in the UPOV EAS development using lettuce as a 

trial species and that the PVPO would submit soybean information to UPOV next. The 

UPOV EAS is compatible with the PVPO’s CRM and would allow the PVPO to accept 

UPOV EAS data but the UPOV electronic payment issue needs to be resolved. The 

Board asked if the UPOV EAS would allow bulk upload of many applications – the 

PVPO responded that UPOV was working on that issue. The Board also asked about 

the security of ePVP – the PVPO responded that the USDA’s e-authentication process 

provides a very secure system. 

PVP Forms Subcommittee Summary 

The PVPO provided a background on the Forms issue which arose because PVP 

applicants need to provide germplasm (seed or in vitro material for potato) to the USDA 

National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation (NCGRP) when submitting a PVP 

application. When PVP expires the germplasm stored at NCGRP is made available to 

the public. This germplasm maybe be genetically engineered (GE) and may produce 

plant incorporated protectants (PIP) that would be regulated by the Environmental 

Protection Agency (EPA). NCGRP needs a better means of informing public seed 
Plant Variety Protection (PVP) Board Teleconference Meeting Minutes – August 6, 2015 

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recipients about expired PVP germplasm from the information that is collected by the 

PVPO. NCGRP has asked the PVPO to help gather accurate information about the 

PVP seed that is stored for 20+ years and eventually distributed to the public using the 

PVP application and seed deposit forms. The Board’s Forms Subcommittee was 

started in 2014 to address PVP questions about IP and biotechnology events. NCGRP 

resolved the IP issue and this subcommittee made recommendation about the GE 

issue. 

The chair of the Forms Subcommittee provided an update and the recommendations. 

The current PVP forms did not provide adequate GE information to NCGRP and 

responses were optional. For the IP issue - NCGRP’s current resolution is to 

recommend that germplasm recipients contact the variety owner to inquire if any IP 

issues are outstanding. The two main issues for the PVP forms involved block 18 of the 

PVP application form (ST-470) and block 4 of the PVP seed deposit form (ST-472). 

The Subcommittee recommended that 

 The word “optional” should be deleted from both block 18 and 4 

 The GE wording of the two forms should be consistent 

 The recommended wording for the GE question in Blocks 18 and 4 is: 

Does the variety contain any biotechnology events?” 

A biotechnology event is defined as a single insertion of a nucleic 

acid construct into a specific site in a plant’s chromosome, that is 

regulated under the U.S. Coordinated Framework for the 

Regulation of Biotechnology. 

 Block 5 of Form ST-472 should be deleted since it is no longer needed by 

NCGRP. 

 The contact information on Form ST-472 should be updated to be generic. 

The Board approved these recommendations. 

The PVPO indicated that these form changes will need to go through the Office of 

Management and Budget (OMB) forms approval process. The American Seed Trade 

Association (ASTA) also has voluntary forms for the PVP deposited germplasm on the 

ASTA website to guide PVP applicants about biotechnology event information needed 

by NCGRP prior to PVP expiration, and also guidance on providing IP information to 

NCGRP. The Board asked if PVPO forms would be retroactive – these forms would not 

be retroactive, however the ASTA forms may provide voluntary guidance and 

information for expiring PVP varieties that NCGRP would release. 
Plant Variety Protection (PVP) Board Teleconference Meeting Minutes – August 6, 2015 

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The Board asked if the revised form questions would cover future biotechnology events 

(genome editing, knockouts, etc.) that may not be regulated under the current system – 

future biotechnology events may be beyond the scope of the current questions. It was 

commented that biotechnology events were defined to capture what is currently 

regulated under the Coordinated Framework and these forms don’t make assumptions 

regarding biotechnology event. The Board asked about the timeframe for the changes 

with OMB – this will need to go through a justification, work plan, approval, and public 

notice/comments period which may require years. 

This completes the mission of the Board’s Forms Subcommittee and it is hereby closed. 

Molecular Marker (MM) Subcommittee/Working Group Update 

The PVPO provided a brief update on the MM Joint Working Group. Plant breeders use 

MMs to accelerate variety development and for variety identification purposes. The 

PVPO sometimes receives applications with MM data that applicants use to distinguish 

their variety from other varieties and as such the PVPO has become an informal 

repository for MM data. In July 2013 the Board recommended that a Subcommittee be 

formed to explore MMs for PVP. In 2013-2014 MM subcommittee identified corn, 

soybean, and lettuce as priority crops. 

In 2014 the PVPO provided maize phenotype data for 89 varieties to the subcommittee 

for a proof of concept study to determine if MM correlates with phenotype data – this 

showed some significance but with low correlation between phenotype and MM. The 

Maize Reference Model arose as an alternative to phenotype-MM direct correlation, 

additionally the PVPO provided soybean phenotype data as another attempt to correlate 

MM and morphology. 

In August 2014 the PVP Subcommittee merged with the ASTA Corn Variety 

Identification Subcommittee to form the ASTA/PVP Joint Working Group since both 

groups were working on complementary issues that could be synergized through this 

merger. 

Currently the PVPO has not used MM differences to distinguish any crops. During the 

December 2014 Board meeting it was recommended that MM could be used to break 

ties in cases where the new variety is facing a phenotypic tie with existing PVP 

varieties. The PVPO will work with applicants to suggest other morphological / 

physiological (phenotypic) traits that could distinguish their variety in these ties. If no 

other phenotypic characteristics can be found then the MM difference must be clear and 

scientifically/statistically valid, and would only be used to distinguish between new 

varieties from an applicant’s existing PVP variety. 
Plant Variety Protection (PVP) Board Teleconference Meeting Minutes – August 6, 2015 

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Overall the PVPO will continue to explore MMs through the MM Working Group’s 

findings as it provides information to the Board. The PVPO will provide a more detailed 

briefing on MM topics prior to the December Board meeting during which a more in 

depth MM discussion will occur. 

The Board asked if the ePVP system will have the ability to store MM data - the current 

system is capable of storing the MM data that has been received previously, but it would 

be impractical to store all MM analysis data for each application. The better approach 

would be to concentrate on finding a solution for the Maize and Soybean reference 

models for variety comparison and only saving the reference data in the PVPO 

database. Currently, the PVPO does not have plans to save molecular profile data for 

each variety. 

Outreach Subcommittee plan 

Expanding the use of PVP and increasing the number of incoming PVP applications has 

been a major PVPO challenge since incoming applications are the PVPO’s only 

revenue source. Over the past 10 years the average number of incoming applications 

is 430, with a range of 304 to 598. The top incoming crops are corn, soybean, wheat, 

potato, and cotton. 

During the December 2014 Board meeting it was suggested that the Board form an 

Outreach Subcommittee composed of Board members and outreach experts. The 

goals would include increasing the awareness of PVP’s benefits and ultimately 

increasing the number of incoming PVP applications. Conceptually this Subcommittee 

would develop outreach ideas, identify target audiences, and identify training/outreach 

materials needed. 

The Board suggested that the PVPO could establish outreach benchmarks through 

higher education with opportunities for synergy. It was also commented that there are 

many goals for outreach, not just maximizing new PVP applicants, but also maximizing 

the benefits for current PVP applicants. It would also be useful to have outreach for 

underrepresented crop sectors and for international applicants. There would also be an 

element of capacity building that would enable new applicants to be successful at PVP. 

The Board wanted to know how awareness was identified as the most critical factor of 

why not to PVP. It was mentioned that universities often look for industry partners 

before they decide to file PVP – if a partner isn’t found – they won’t file. 

The Board commented that it may not be reasonable to try to increase the number of 

PVP applications each year – since there has been consolidation and other methods of 
Plant Variety Protection (PVP) Board Teleconference Meeting Minutes – August 6, 2015 

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IP protection. The Board also asked if there has been any trend in public versus the 

private sector growth. It was mentioned that it may be possible to have a PVP survey 

through the National Wheat Improvement Committee. 

The PVPO is at a point where strategic visioning is necessary and with the Board’s help 

the PVPO can better align its vision with the needs of plant breeders. The outcome of 

an Outreach Subcommittee may be different than expanding the use of PVP; instead it 

may provide a broader vision of where the PVPO should focus. The Board suggested a 

broader analysis and visioning to describe a future state and to be more strategic such 

as how to increase the intrinsic value of PVP to variety developers. Overall this will help 

the PVPO develop a strategic plan. 

The PVPO asked anyone who is interested in participating in this Subcommittee to 

email the PVPO. 

Miscellaneous, Plan for December 2015 Board Meeting, and Adjourn 

Marshall Ryegrass Issue 

The PVPO has received communications that a third extension for the PVP of 

‘Marshall’ ryegrass might be forthcoming. The PVPO presented a summary of 

the PVP activity for this variety – this variety originally received PVP (certificate# 

8200179) on June 29, 1984 after the office’s examination and finding that the 

variety was new, distinct, uniform, and stable; the PVP certificate expired on 

June 29, 2002 (PVP was granted for an 18 year term under the PVP Act in place 

at the time of certification). 

PVP certificate 200400094 for the ‘Marshall’ ryegrass variety was granted again 

on February 6, 2004 based on the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2004. 

The ten year term for the second PVP grant expired on February 6, 2014. This 

was the only variety ever granted a second certificate and in effect a term 

extension by the PVPO. At the May 2014 Board meeting – the Board 

unanimously voted for this recommendation. 

The Plant Variety Protection Advisory Board expresses its grave concern 

over the Marshall Ryegrass issue regarding the legislated private 

reissuance of a Plant Variety Protection certificate, for the second time in 

approximately ten years. The Board believes this practice is contrary to 

Section 131 of the Plant Variety Protection Act and creates significant risk 

to innovation by undermining encouragement for research and investment 
Plant Variety Protection (PVP) Board Teleconference Meeting Minutes – August 6, 2015 

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by creating uncertainty of future commercial opportunities. This legislation 

is also counter to the purpose and spirit of the PVP Act. The Board 

believes such a practice will greatly reduce the volume and diversity of 

available certified crop varieties, and unfairly increase the cost of seed to 

society. The Board proposes the PVP Office and the Secretary of 

Agriculture communicate these concerns to the appropriate Congressional 

authorities. 

It was discussed that similar language may be inserted into the Agriculture 

Appropriation bill in November 2015. The Board also commented that this 

recommendation may be beyond the scope of the three functions of the Board 

established by the PVP Act. The Board commented that they believe a 

recommendation was necessary since this type of legislation would undermine 

the integrity of the PVP system and the US IP system; and that other countries 

could follow the U.S. and selectively extend IP protection. Ultimately, it was 

discussed; the farmers will be harmed if this language is allowed. 

The Board discussed this issue and recommended that the same 

recommendation from 2014 be placed before the PVP Board again. 

The Board unanimously approved this recommendation. The PVPO indicated 

that they could forward this language to the White House Liaison Office for 

forwarding to the Secretary. 

December 2015 PVP Board Meeting 

The December 2015 PVP Board meeting will occur at ASTA’s Corn, Sorghum, 

and Soybean Research Conference at the Hyatt Hotel on East Wacker Dr., 

Chicago, IL. The meeting will occur over 2 days December 7, 2015 - 1:00-5:00 

PM and December 8, 2015 - 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM. The meeting agenda will 

include updates on PVPO accomplishments, Outreach Subcommittee, MM 

Working Group, UPOV / SAA meetings, ePVP and activities on PVP cooperation 

with other countries. It was suggested that the Outreach Subcommittee update 

and the agenda item on cooperation with other countries be adjacent to each 

other. 

The Board meeting was adjourned.