Eurosemillas is forced to refute the press article that was apparently issued by the Club of Protected Plant Varieties (CVVP) on Thursday, June 9, as "it reinterpreted, and even distorted in a biased way the content and objective scope of the resolution regarding the protection of the Tango mandarin that the Board of Appeal of the Community Plant Variety Office made public on May 30."
In this regard, Eurosemillas specifies that:
1. The Community Plant Variety Office and its Board of Appeal have confirmed in up to THREE successive resolutions the Community's protection of the Tango. In all cases they confirmed that this variety met the legal conditions to be registered, as it was uniform, stable, and different than all other varieties, including the Nadorcott variety.
2. Europe's maximum plant variety authority has ratified what the Spanish, and the US and South African authorities had already stated based on independent reports (different than the IVIA); that the Tango mandarin differs from the Nadorcott mandarin in two fundamental HIGH VALUE AGRICULTURAL and COMMERCIAL characteristics:
a) The fruit's absence of seeds when exposed to other varieties' cross pollination (less than 1 seed per fruit in nearly all cases, unlike the Nadorcott, which has over 11 seeds).
Nadorcott plantations have to be grown in isolation, covered with meshes, and beehives have to be removed from where they are cultivated so that the Nadorcott don't get pollinated, which would make them lose their commercial value, profitability, and cause serious environmental damage to the bees and their key role as pollinators, to beekeepers, and to the general biodiversity, as has been denounced by several agricultural organizations and environmentalists.
b) The insignificant viability of the Tango's pollen (1.7%) versus the aggressive pollination of the Nadorcott (76). Tango does not produce seeds in other varieties that are exposed to cross-pollination, but the Nadorcott does fill it neighbors with seeds. Tango solves these two serious issues that the Nadorcott has. That's why it is one of the few second season mandarins in the market that, genetically speaking, has double gamete sterility, male and female, which gives it a high value.
3. The CVVP disregards these two fundamental differences in its malicious and bizarre press release, and speaks about the existence of two other characteristics that the University of California Riverside claimed differentiated the Tango from other varieties, such as the number of radial grooves it had, and the existence of a depression in its stem area. The CVVP is just trying to hide the importance of the aforementioned differences. This distinction, which is not fundamental, is the only favorable point that the CVVP and the NCP present, as the other arguments submitted by them have been rejected by the resolution, and that got them CONVICTED IN COASTS.
4. It is false that the IVIA endorsed the report that concluded, in no more than three folios, that the Tango was a variety that had been essentially derived from the Nadorcott variety. It's just not true, not because the document did not exist, but because it wasn't made official by the governing body or analyzed by the institute's scientific committee. This, in fact, is documented in the official letter that the director of the IVIA sent Eurosemillas on October 7, 2014, where he ratified that the report did not reflect IVIA's institutional position. The Board of the center had a similar position at their meetings on December 4, 2014, and March 5, 2015, where they lamented that one of its members had made public a private document of a researcher that was (and is) sub judice.
5. We should not forget the serious conflict of interests and lack of objectiveness that the author of said article, Mr. Luis Navarro, has. Mr Navarro has developed several lines of research funded by the members of the company holding the rights of Nadorcott in Spain, and the breeder of other mandarins that compete against the Tango variety. In fact, Mr. Navarro was also hired as an expert and participated in proceedings in favor of the CVVP.
6. According to legal and scientific advisors for the Tango variety, including the opinion of the National Prize of Genetics, Professor Joseph I. Cubero Salmeron, the differences in the number of seeds and pollen viability between the Tango and the Nadorcott make it impossible to consider that the Tango is a variety that was essentially derived from the Nadorcott, or that it can't be sold without the authorization of the latter. These are the reasons why the courts in Valencia rejected adopting precautionary measures against the Tango.
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