Heirloom Plant - UK and EU Law and National Lists

UK and EU Law and National Lists

In the UK and Europe, it is thought that many Heritage vegetable varieties (perhaps over 2000) have been lost since the 1970s, when EU laws were passed to make it illegal to sell any vegetable cultivar that is not on a national list of any EU country. This was set up to help in eliminating dishonest seed suppliers selling one seed as another, and to keep any one variety true. Thus there were stringent tests to assess varieties, with a view to ensuring they remain the same from one generation to the next.

These tests (called DUS) encompass Distinctness, Uniformity and Stability. But since some heritage cultivars are not necessarily uniform from plant to plant, or indeed within a single plant - a single cultivar - this has been a sticking point. Distinctness has been a problem, moreover, because many cultivars have several names, perhaps coming from different areas or countries (e.g. Carrot cultivar 'Long Surrey Red' is also genuinely known as 'Red Intermediate', 'St. Valery' and 'Chertsey'.). However, it has been ascertained that some of these varieties that look similar are in fact different cultivars. On the other hand, two that were known to be different cultivars were almost identical to each other; thus the one would be dropped from the national list in order to clean it up.

Another problem has been the fact that it is somewhat expensive to register and then maintain a cultivar on a national list. Therefore, if no seed-breeder or supplier thinks it will sell very well, no-one will maintain it on a list, and so the seed will not be re-bred by commercial seed breeders.

In recent years, progress has been made in the UK to set up allowances and less stringent tests for heritage varieties on a 'B' national list, but this is still under consideration.

One worldwide alternative is to submit heirloom seeds to a seedbank. These public repositories in turn maintain and disburse these genetics to anyone who will use them appropriately; typically, approved uses are breeding, study and sometimes further distribution.