Italian landraces and their safeguard and use Developed countries seed market attempts to achieve three main goals: 1) develop new crop varieties that are essential for evolution in agricultural practices 2) furnish the market of high technology seeds that allow to realize higher productions directly or by the interaction with appropriate technical practices of cultivation and environment 3) maintain, through seeds, an high level of biodiversity, whose conservation allows to produce high quality products and to realize a sustainable agriculture. European objective are looking to establish a Community programme on the conservation, characterisation, collection and utilisation of genetic resources in agriculture. Those resources are regarded as fundamental to safeguard agricultural biodiversity and are mostly represented by landraces which are naturally adapted to the local and regional conditions. Landraces, developed by man since the beginning of agriculture are now threatened by genetic erosion. The project has considered the role of the seed in developing organic farming and in landrace conservation and use. Landraces have been considered as a mean for preserving biodiversity in obtaining typical products. Political attempts on the regulations of landrace conservation and use have met difficulties due to the lack of a definition of “landrace” generally accepted. The project, on the basis of the international literature, proposes the following definition: “Landrace is a genetically variable population, not improved by ‘formal’ breeding, spread in the same area where it originated through repeated cultivation by farmers and that the local community considers as its heirloom”. The definition proposed could be easily adopted on the redaction of landraces catalogues, could be used for “on farm” conservation activities and in the commercialization of PGI and PDO products. Landrace conservation can be realized with profit only after the redaction of an inventory of landraces still existing and after their inscription in an appropriate Register. The realization of this register, already planned by the Italian law 46/2007, require to identify descriptors for landrace characterization. Descriptors can not be the same indicated for improved varieties but must lead in any case to assess distinctiveness which is recognized as a fundamental parameter for inscription.
Le varietà locali presenti in Italia e la loro salvaguardia per la difesa della biodiversità nazionale
FALCINELLI, Mario;LORENZETTI, Silvia
2008
Abstract
Italian landraces and their safeguard and use Developed countries seed market attempts to achieve three main goals: 1) develop new crop varieties that are essential for evolution in agricultural practices 2) furnish the market of high technology seeds that allow to realize higher productions directly or by the interaction with appropriate technical practices of cultivation and environment 3) maintain, through seeds, an high level of biodiversity, whose conservation allows to produce high quality products and to realize a sustainable agriculture. European objective are looking to establish a Community programme on the conservation, characterisation, collection and utilisation of genetic resources in agriculture. Those resources are regarded as fundamental to safeguard agricultural biodiversity and are mostly represented by landraces which are naturally adapted to the local and regional conditions. Landraces, developed by man since the beginning of agriculture are now threatened by genetic erosion. The project has considered the role of the seed in developing organic farming and in landrace conservation and use. Landraces have been considered as a mean for preserving biodiversity in obtaining typical products. Political attempts on the regulations of landrace conservation and use have met difficulties due to the lack of a definition of “landrace” generally accepted. The project, on the basis of the international literature, proposes the following definition: “Landrace is a genetically variable population, not improved by ‘formal’ breeding, spread in the same area where it originated through repeated cultivation by farmers and that the local community considers as its heirloom”. The definition proposed could be easily adopted on the redaction of landraces catalogues, could be used for “on farm” conservation activities and in the commercialization of PGI and PDO products. Landrace conservation can be realized with profit only after the redaction of an inventory of landraces still existing and after their inscription in an appropriate Register. The realization of this register, already planned by the Italian law 46/2007, require to identify descriptors for landrace characterization. Descriptors can not be the same indicated for improved varieties but must lead in any case to assess distinctiveness which is recognized as a fundamental parameter for inscription.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.