The Conservation Varieties Regime: Its Past, Present and Future in the Protection and Commercialisation of Vegetable Landraces in Europe

In 1998, the European Union aimed to make the official Common European Catalogue of Plant Varieties more flexible and to mitigate the decline of agricultural biodiversity in European rural areas by introducing the Conservation Varieties Regime (CVR): a set of rules pertaining to local and/or traditional varieties cultivated in specific regions that are at risk of genetic erosion. This initiative was intended to permit the sale of those varieties that do not fully meet the distinctness, uniformity and stability (DUS) criteria required for the registration of standard varieties in the Common European Catalogue. In this review, we examine the impact of establishing the CVR 25 years after its first definition. As of the date of data collection, 191 conservation varieties were registered throughout Europe, representing only 0.88% of the total number of varieties included in the Common Catalogue. The most important countries are Spain, Italy and Croatia, which have, respectively, 57, 43 and 26 conservation varieties. The case study from Italy highlights that the CVR is poorly structured and is characterised by the initiatives of individual entities that take it upon themselves to protect and/or promote specific vegetable varieties. In this review, we discuss such data in relation to the protection and commercialisation of vegetable landraces in Europe. Overall, the CVR has failed to promote and enforce a dedicated market for all those varieties excluded from registration in the Common Catalogue due to DUS requirements.