Are UPOV descriptors a useful and feasible tool?

The official document listing morphological traits for artichoke description is up to now the UPOV document published as a draft in 2001 and adopted on 25 March 2004 by the European Union Community Plant Variety Office (CPVOTP/184/1 Final) as "Protocol For Distinctness, Uniformity and Stability tests". The list of descriptors and the specifications face some problems and is now under revision. In the present work the UPOV descriptors fidelity has been tested not as protocol for DUS test, but to characterize artichoke accessions in the frame of the CYNARES European project. With this purpose, some of the UPOV descriptors were modified and others have been better specified; for example the leaf and the bract to be measured. Some other descriptors were added to better describe the productivity characteristics. In general, traits were measured biometrically rather then by score, since these are easier to be recorded and less affected by personal interpretation. Even though scores somehow reduce environmental effects, since the category are referred to a test genotype. The results obtained from the evaluation of ten Italian 'Romanesco' landraces are reported in the present work. The evaluation has been run in the west coastal area of Italy during two subsequent growing seasons. For each trait, ANOVA was carried out to show significance of the experimental components, i.e., genotypes, years, replications, and genotypes × year interaction. No significant differences between years and especially for genotype × year interaction were expected in feasible descriptors. Conversely, many descriptors appear to be environmentally affected and unreliable. Results for each UPOV trait are discussed.