The U.S. Department of Agriculture has issued certificates of protection to developers of 23 new varieties of seed-reproduced and tuber-propagated plants.   They include cotton, lettuce, oat, orchardgrass, peach, soybean, and wheat.

The twenty-three certificates are being issued under the Plant Variety Protection Act. The certificates require that the varieties be new, distinct, uniform and stable.  The owners will have the exclusive right to reproduce, sell, import and export their products in the United States for the duration of protection.

        The 23 certificates are:

• the FM 832LL, FM 981LL, FM 958LL, and FM 966LL varieties of cotton, developed by Cotton Seed International Proprietary Limited (CAN 065 327 915), New South Wales, Australia, & Bayer CropScience GmbH, Frankfurt am Main, Germany;

• the Linwood variety of cotton, developed by Seed Source, Inc., Cambridge, Mass.;

• the MISCOT 8839 variety of cotton, developed by Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station, Mississippi, Miss.;

• the Heritage, Napoleon, Legend, Gorilla, Enterprise, and Icon, varieties of lettuce, developed by Progeny Advanced Genetics, Inc, Salinas, Calif.;   

• the Tarragona variety of lettuce, developed by Seminis Vegetable Seeds, Inc., Oxnard, Calif.;   

• the Optigon, Virtuose, Toronto, and Guadeloupe varieties of lettuce, developed by Rijk Zwaan Zaadteelt en Zaadhandel B.V., DE LIER, the Netherlands;

• the LA9339 variety of oat, developed by Board of Supervisors of Louisiana State University and A&M College, Baton Rouge, La.; 

• the SS 76-40* variety of oat, developed by North Carolina Agricultural Research Service, Raleigh, N.C.; 

• the Mammoth variety of orchardgrass, developed by Cascade International Seed Company, Aumsville, Ore.; 

• the Kottman* variety of soybean, developed by Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center and Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio;

• the TruGold variety of peach, developed by Washington State University Research Foundation, Pullman, Wash., and the Secretary of Agriculture, U.S. Department of   Agriculture,  Washington, D.C.; and  

• the McIntosh  variety of common wheat, developed by University of Georgia Research Foundation, Inc., and Florida Agricultural Experiment Station, Athens, Ga.

* In the United States, seed of this variety (1) shall be sold by variety name only as a class of certified seed and (2) shall conform to the number of generations specified by the owner of  the rights (84 STAT. 1542, as amended, 7 U.S.C. 2321 ET SEQ). 

USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service administers the Plant Variety Protection Act, which provides time- limited marketing protection to developers of new and distinct seed-reproduced and tuber-propagated plants ranging from farm crops to flowers.  For additional information contact the Plant Variety Protection Office at telephone (301) 504-5518, fax (301) 504-5291 or the Internet at www.ams.usda.gov/science/PVPO/pvpindex.htm.