The european geographical quality labels and the conservation of horticultural plant genetic resources in Catalonia

Abstract

The European geographical quality labels were created to favour rural development, protecting agricultural and food products with superior quality characteristics of an objectively demonstrable nature. This quality is determined by the environmental effect (including transformation processes where appropriate) and/or the plant variety or animal breed that provides the raw materials. Most often, the varieties that provide these superior qualities are landraces. In Catalonia, due to its geographical, climatic and historical characteristics, there is a large number of landraces, conserved ex situ in germplasm banks or on-site by farmers, while others have been inexorably lost. From the review of some cases of horticultural species, we can safely state that the necessary work to obtain a geographical mark (especially the Protected Designation of Origin) involves the documentation of cultivated biodiversity, and the regeneration and conservation of genetic material, its purification of foreign introgressions and its evolution. It would therefore be desirable to increase the number of geographical labels by working efficiently, identifying candidate areas and varieties, and carrying out the respective studies. This justifies the existence of a systematic programme of collection, documentation and characterization of the agrobiodiversity that will later be used to establish the labels. Given the characteristics of the companies of the primary production sector, especially when it comes to materials adapted to local conditions, the spontaneous promotion of a new quality label would appear to be unfeasible. Public administrations should become the motor of these labels and not only act as their administrative managers. Their intervention up to now has been rather voluntarist but the creation of a working group to promote labels should be encouraged, identifying areas and candidate products and advising and accompanying producers to obtain and consolidate new geographical labels. Only in this way will we justify to the citizens the expenses incurred in conservation, demonstrating that it is subsequently supplemented by their application and their profitable economic and social utilization.

Keywords: Protected Designation of Origin (PDO), Protected Geographical Indication (PGI), agrobiodiversity, horticulture, rural development.