Fundamental to the study of biodiversity is an accurate description of species. To be useful, descriptions must be collected using consistent and accurate methods. In creating a description a set of key characteristics are observed, measured and recorded. Descriptions are valuable tools in the identification of existing organisms and the discovery of new ones; in crop production they are essential to breeding programs and the management of breeder’s intellectual property rights.
The Scottish Government’s Plant Variety Team at Science and Advice for Scottish Agriculture (SASA) have been involved in the collection of plant variety descriptions in support of crop legislation since 1923 and have accumulated a wealth of high quality data on both current and heritage varieties.
Until recently it had not been possible to make this data available to a wider audience, paper publications would have been unwieldy and without a search facility would have been of limited use.
Nearly ninety years after we started collecting plant variety descriptions, advances in information technology have allowed us to unlock this huge resource and make it available on the Internet in a searchable form.
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Many of the descriptions are illustrated with photographs from the SASA image library and are available offline at higher resolution. Contact the Photograpy Section at SASA to discuss your requirements.
