The Secretary-General of the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV), Dr. Kamil Idris, and Mr. Bart Kiewiet, President of the Community Plant Variety Office (CPVO), signed on October 21, 2004, a memorandum of understanding for a program of cooperation in the development of their on-line databases
providing information on plant varieties.

Dr. Idris and Mr. Kiewiet signed the memorandum of understanding on the sidelines of the annual session of the Council of UPOV, which met in Geneva on October 21, 2004. The memorandum of understanding sets out the parameters of cooperation for the development and maintenance of a web-based UPOV Plant Variety Database (UPOV database) and CPVO Centralized Database of Variety Denominations (CPVO database). Under the memorandum of understanding, UPOV and CPVO will join forces to maintain the integrity of their respective databases and to develop software to secure compatibility between the UPOV and CPVO databases to maximize plant variety information available to users.

The new UPOV product will result in a web-based version of the existing UPOV plant variety database (UPOV-ROM), which is currently only available on CD-ROM. It will also be equipped with additional functionalities to facilitate enhanced data searches and thereby improve access to information. The UPOV database currently contains data provided by UPOV members on plant varieties for which protection has been granted, or which are the subject of an application for protection and also those which are included in national lists of varieties for marketing purposes.

UPOV, an intergovernmental organization with 57 members, provides a system of plant variety protection to encourage the development of new varieties of plants, for the benefit of society. New varieties of plants providing improved performance and quality and increased access to global markets, are one of the most effective tools to promote sustainable agriculture, food production and overall economic development.