Agrobiodiversity is an integral component of genetic improvement for ensuring food, health and nutritional security. One of the options to promote agrobiodiversity in the field is by using heterogeneous materials such as evolutionary populations (EPs) including composite crosses (CC), cultivar mixtures (CMs), etc. Evolutionary plant breeding (EPB) is a technique used to create
genotypes having a broad genetic base. However, EPs are not recognized as varieties due to a lack of policy provisions to register/release them as a variety. The distinctness, uniformity, and stability (DUS) are the fundamental features required as per the guidelines set by UPOV protocol. EPs, as a single variety, are not fully uniform for various traits because EPs share different breeding lines and have different genetic backgrounds. Broad genetic base varieties could be the option of varietal choices if proper varietal identification, purity and quality seed production guidelines are developed and readily utilized. This paper is based on literature, consultation meeting of key stakeholders, and policy makers regarding EPs for varietal registration, source seed maintenance and marketing. It focuses on identifying key constraints and challenges for the adoption of EPs and suggests ways forward to recognize EPs as a variety for seed production and marketing. Particularly, UPOV has highlighted DUS to protect the variety and reward creativity in plant breeding. Similarly, UPOV guidelines also suggest that countries can develop new standards for the identification and registration of a new variety like EPs. For that, a range of variations in traits could be considered and new variety will have compared to the parental lines from which new variety is developed. The EU Commission implemented a “Commission Implementing Decision” in 2014 (EU Directive 66/402/EEC) to allow experimentally heterogeneous materials to be marketed in Europe, allowing farmers to start producing their own seeds and getting benefits. The EU guidelines for the marketing of EPs can be used as a reference document for developing guidelines for EP varietal registration, source seed production, and its maintenance. Therefore, EU Directive 66/402/EEC guidelines are important documentary evidence to release/register EPs. These new initiatives will support to develop and propose the guideline for registering broad genetic base varieties and would be instrumental for the identification and quality seed production of EPs with some degree of flexibility in DUS tests. Promoting EPs and CMs as a variety will be an important initiative for the production and marketing of broad genetic base varieties which are resilient to climate change and play a pivotal role in the food and nutritional security of smallholder farmers.

Keywords: Cultivar mixture, DUS, evolutionary population, broad genetic base, heterogeneous genotype, UPOV