Promotion of Plant Varieties

The Sortenförderungsgesellschaft mbH (SFG) is a 100-per-cent subsidiary of BDP. SFG organises and facilitates statutory and evaluation trials of plant varieties. 

SFG organises VCU testing on behalf of the German Plant Variety Office. In this function, SFG co-ordinates the provision of trial field plots by plant breeding companies and their subsequent remuneration for this service. The results of these trials are the basis for the decision of the German Plant Variety Office whether a plant variety will be listed in the German Plant Variety Catalogue (a pre-requisite for the marketing of seeds of this plant variety). The data are also used for the Recommended Plant Variety List.

Apart from statutory VCU testing, SFG in co-operation with German regional agricultural authorities also carries out trials to evaluate Community plant varieties. Plant varieties that have been registered in other member states of the EU can be marketed in Germany, but there is no experience on how they perform under German cultivation conditions. For this reason, SFG organises trials for such Community plant varieties in order to provide objective results for evaluating their performance under German agricultural conditions.

SFG is also involved in consultancy projects co-financed by public authorities in Central and Eastern Europe. This consultancy service aims to help project partner countries to establish and implement a suitable legislative framework for the seed industry modeled after Western European regulated seed markets.