Date posted: March 30, 2004

PRRCG in profile

An overview of the PRRCG and how it works.

Mandate

The CFIA's Variety Registration Office makes all final decisions on which crop lines are approved for federal variety registration. It is the PRRCG's job to assess candidate crop lines before registration and advise the CFIA on which ones it believes should win approval. Part of this includes administering pre-registration tests across the region.

The CFIA relies on many recommending bodies across the country. The PRRCG's specific mandate includes crops targeted for Prairie production in four major areas: wheat, rye and triticale; barley and oat; pulse and special crops; and oilseeds. Crop lines that fall under this mandate are required to go through the PRRCG system before they can advance for consideration by the CFIA.

The PRRCG mandate is not permanent. The Variety Registration Office reviews the committee's work every five years before deciding whether or not to grant another five-year mandate. The PRRCG mandate was most recently reviewed in 1999.

Structure and membership

The PRRCG consists of an executive committee, main committee and four subcommittees: the Wheat, Rye and Triticale Subcommittee; Barley and Oat Subcommittee ; Pulse and Special Crops Subcommittee; and Oilseeds Subcommittee. (Canola is covered by a separate Western Canada Canola/Rapeseed Recommending Committee, which operates independently outside the PRRCG.) Each subcommittee has three evaluation teams responsible for assessing merit in one of three areas: 1) breeding and agronomy, 2) disease, and 3) quality.

The PRRCG includes full voting members and non-voting associate members. Voting members are those with the expertise to properly assess crop varieties, such as plant breeders and quality experts. Non-voting members typically include farmers, research centre administrators, extension specialists and others with a legitimate interest in committee activities.

The decision-making process

The PRRCG's annual meeting includes several steps:

Evaluation teams assess the candidates. The process begins with each evaluation team assessing the candidate crop lines for performance in its particular area of expertise - breeding and agronomy, disease, or quality.

The evaluation teams judge the candidates and assign one of four possible votes.

• Support - the candidate's performance is considered superior to current registered varieties.
• Do not object - the candidate's performance is considered similar to check varieties and meets the minimum performance criteria.
• Object - the entry is considered inferior to the check varieties and does not meet the minimum guidelines established.
• Abstain - expected only in the case of an openly declared conflict of interest or in the absence of information on which to base a decision.

Subcommittees vote to recommend. Evaluation team assessments are then discussed at a meeting of the full subcommittee, as a basis for the subcommittee's formal vote to recommend the candidates for registration or turn them down. Abstentions are expected only in the case of an openly declared conflict of interest. At this level, the voting is based on an overall assessment of the candidate, and is typically performed by a show of hands. However, each subcommittee can decide on an appropriate voting method. For instance, the Wheat, Rye and Triticale Subcommittee used a secret ballot in 2002 and 2003.

Option to appeal. If a sponsor objects to the decision of the subcommittee, an appeal can be made to the PRRCG executive committee, whereby the executive votes and majority rules. A further appeal is also available, by which a three-person appeal panel is selected; one panel member is selected by the subcommittee chair, another by the sponsor and a third by the registrar of the Variety Registration Office. In both scenarios, the sponsor must pay a fee for the appeal.

Recommendations approved by the PRRCG are forwarded to CFIA. Once the subcommittee has made its recommendations for registration and the general membership has approved the subcommittee's actions, the secretary of each subcommittee sends the registration recommendations to the CFIA's Variety Registration Office.

Special cases

These alternatives to full registration are also available.

Contract registration. Contract registration is an alternative to the usual variety registration process. Five-year contract registrations are available for crops that fall outside the normal traits of a particular crop class, but have a specific end-use. The sponsor must show that 1) an end-user exists for the crop and 2) that a closed production system is achievable, to prevent the crop from negatively affecting other crops in the system.

Interim registration. Not all lines are put forward for full registration. Another option is "interim" or temporary registration, which is typically requested to allow enough seed production for additional testing of quality traits. For example, a malt barley line may require seed for commercial plant scale testing, or a wheat line may require seed for milling quality testing.

Interim registration is typically granted for an initial two years, with potential for an additional two years following further review by the relevant subcommittee and CFIA.

Deregistration. The PRRCG also provides a forum to recommend the deregistration of varieties. This is often requested by the developers of a variety, in cases where a reduction in market demand or susceptibility to a new problem have lowered the variety's potential below a threshold of viability.

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