Advancing reform of European Union plant variety registration: institutional, empirical, and policy insights for sustainable agri-food governance
(English) Plant variety registration is a critical regulatory gatekeeper between the breeding of improved varieties and their farm-level adoption. In the European Union, however, this system is being outpaced by technological advances and sustainability challenges. Legislative reform is now underway...
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| Tipo de recurso: | tesis doctoral |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2025 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) |
| Repositorio: | UPCommons. Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC |
| Idioma: | inglés |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:upcommons.upc.edu:2117/450924 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://hdl.handle.net/2117/450924 https://dx.doi.org/10.5821/dissertation-2117-450924 |
| Access Level: | acceso embargado |
| Palabra clave: | Plant Variety Registration VCU Technology Adoption Impact Assessment Multi Criteria Decision Making Analytic Hierarchy Process Discrete Choice Experiment Cumulative Prospect Theory Agri-cultural Policy Sustainability Registre de Varietats Vegetals Evaluación de Impacto Adopció de Tecnologia Avaluació d'Impacte Presa de Decisions Multicriteri Procés Analític Jeràrquic Experiments d'Elecció Discreta Teoria de la Perspectiva Acumulada Política Agrària Sostenibilitat Registro de Variedades Vegetales Adopción de Tecnología Toma de Decisiones Multicriterio Proceso Analítico Jerárquico Experimentos de Elección Discreta Teoría de la Perspectiva Acumulada Política Agraria Sostenibilidad 502 - Natura. Estudi, conservació i protecció de la natura 663/664 - Aliments i nutrició. Enologia. Olis. Greixos 631/635 - Gestió de les explotacions agrícoles 338 - Situació econòmica. Política econòmica. Gestió, control i planificació de l'economia. Producció. Serveis. Turisme. Preus Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Desenvolupament humà i sostenible Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Enginyeria agroalimentària Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Economia i organització d'empreses |
| Sumario: | (English) Plant variety registration is a critical regulatory gatekeeper between the breeding of improved varieties and their farm-level adoption. In the European Union, however, this system is being outpaced by technological advances and sustainability challenges. Legislative reform is now underway to address these shortcomings, aiming to improve the system’s efficiency by integrating new technologies and sustainability criteria into variety testing and fostering greater harmonisation across Member States. Although these reforms are broadly welcomed, diverging positions among stakeholder groups and EU institutions remain unresolved. Bridging these differences will require robust evidence to inform the ongoing negotiations. This thesis responds to this demand by providing an evidence-based assessment of the current system’s inefficiencies and by proposing realistic reform pathways to help reconcile core tensions between regulatory drag and productivity, divergent stakeholder interests, and the gap between policy goals and farm-level realities. To achieve these objectives, this research presents an integrated framework that engages all key actors in variety testing and combines econometric analysis, decision-analytic modelling, and qualitative analysis. Using a large panel dataset on crop registration and productivity, a fixed-effects analysis provides evidence of regulatory drag on productivity gains, particularly for crops subject to Value for Cultivation and Use testing. Evidence gathered from stakeholders explores into the factors behind these regulatory delays and identifies pathways to overcome systemic inefficiencies, including the uptake of enabling technologies and the harmonisation of testing processes. Subsequently, an analysis of contested policy alternatives is conducted using a replicable framework that integrates expert judgment with public input through multi-criteria decision methods and complementary weighting techniques. The results reveal a clear consensus on prioritising the adoption of technological advancements to improve the system's efficiency and accuracy. However, the analysis also exposes disagreements over efforts to harmonise the system and include sustainability criteria in testing procedures, revealing significant heterogeneity among stakeholder groups. To further investigate the contested issue of adding sustainability criteria in variety testing, a farm-level study is presented to elicit the preferences of apple growers in Spain. Using a Discrete Choice Experiment, farmers' preferences for sustainability traits in new apple varieties were elicited and examined in relation to risk behaviours. The results show a positive but heterogeneous demand for sustainability-related traits, with willingness-to-pay shaped by farm characteristics rather than by measured risk attitudes. Together, these findings demonstrate how data-driven and stakeholder-informed reforms can reduce institutional friction by establishing common ground for negotiation on key aspects of the regulation. Both stakeholder priorities and farmers’ demands point toward the need to prioritise technological uptake and design mechanisms that facilitate the delivery of climate-resilient and resource-efficient varieties. Effective stakeholder involvement and continuous evidence generation are essential for the regulatory path forward. By integrating evidence across institutional, technological, and behavioural layers, this research advances the goals of the European Green Deal and the Farm to Fork Strategy and provides a transferable framework for future assessments of agricultural policy and innovation. |
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