Introduction

Variety development involves considerable time and investment. Identification of a variety is important at all stages of production. Thus, need for an effective plant variety protection system felt that safeguard against unlawful exploitation of any variety and also to stimulate the development of new varieties. Considering this, Government of India established a sui generic legal system known as Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act, 2001 (PPV & FR Act, 2001). The implementing Authority of the act, Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Authority was created in 2005 and is based at New Delhi.

PPV & FR Act, 2001 provides platform for registration of plant varieties based on distinctiveness, uniformity and stability (DUS) test apart from novelty. DUS test determines whether a newly bred variety differs from existing varieties within the same species, whether the characteristics used to establish distinctness are expressed uniformly and these characteristics do not change over subsequent generations. National test guidelines for conduct of Distinctiveness, Uniformity and Stability test on potato was published in year 2009. This document composed of a set of 51 DUS characters in potato. Central Potato Research Institute, Shimla, a national institute for potato research and development, is identified as the nodal agency to carry out activities related to registration of potato varieties including filing of applications of varieties developed and released in India, conduct and coordinate of DUS testing and documentation thereof. At present (up to November 2020), 17 varieties of public sector and 10 from private sectors are registered under New, Extant (notified) and Varieties of Common Knowledge (VCK) category.

The compendium enlists details of registered potato varieties in the order of their registration details and variety description i.e. denomination, parentage, category/group of registration, gazette notification, applicant details, distinct characters, agronomic and commercial attributes.

Dalamu, Babita Chaudhary, Raj Kumar, Vinod Kumar, VK Gupta, Nimisha Kaushal, Ratna Preeti Kaur, Shashi Rawat, Ashwani K Sharma, Vinay Bhardwaj, Manoj Kumar