User Notes for TGP

User Notes for TGP/7 Annex 4: Collection of Approved Characteristics

Background

As explained in TGP/7 "Development of Test Guidelines" the collection of approved characteristics in TGP/7 Annex 4 presents characteristics, with their corresponding states of expression, which have already been approved for inclusion in existing Test Guidelines and which are already translated into English, French, German and Spanish. Drafters are invited to search the collection for the characteristic which they wish to use. If the appropriate characteristic and its corresponding states of expression are found, this can be copied directly into the new Test Guidelines. However, it should be remembered that what may appear to be very similar characteristics in different types of plant, or different organs of the same plant, may in fact be under different types of genetic control. Thus, for example, in one type of plant, or one organ, the characteristic "profile" might be a qualitative characteristic e.g. straight (1), curved (2) but in another type of plant, or organ, it might be a quantitative characteristic e.g. straight or slightly curved (1), moderately curved (2), strongly curved (3).

The collection presents the characteristic as it is included in the relevant Test Guidelines. In addition, for certain characteristics, it provides information on the Test Guidelines from which it has been taken. This information is placed in the blank "header" space in the column for example varieties since this entire column is likely to be "cleared" by the drafter after pasting into his new draft because the example varieties will not be relevant.

Index / Searching the Collection

The index to the Collection of Approved Characteristics is in the form of an Excel table
(https://www.upov.int/restrict/en/collection_chs_table.xls) to facilitate searching for the desired characteristics. The following extract is provided to explain how to use the index table:

Column (Plant organs)

The header column contains the plant organs which come before the first colon in the characteristic heading e.g. Plant: height. Each plant part is given a two letter code (e.g. Plant = PL).

Row (Features)

The header row identifies some common features used to describe the plant organs e.g. presence, density, color etc.. Each feature identified in the row is given a two letter code (e.g. density = DE).

Searching

If the collection contains a characteristic corresponding to a particular plant organ and feature, the composite four-letter combined code is completed in the table e.g. Plant: density = PLDE. To see all the characteristics contained in the table corresponding to "PLDE", open the document containing the collection (https://www.upov.int/restrict/en/collection.doc) and use the "find" function in Word (e.g. [CTRL - F] for "PLDE" which will take you to the relevant section in the Table of Characteristics.

The categorization of the collection and index table cannot be precise because what is broadly the same characteristic may be described slightly differently in different Test Guidelines e.g. Plant: height and Foliage: height may be interchangeable. Therefore, in some cases it may be useful to look down, for example, the "height" column to see all the plant organs described by height (e.g. Plant, Foliage, Stem) to see the various possibilities.

The table is restricted to two dimensions and cannot precisely categorize all characteristics. For example, some characteristics contain three components e.g. "Leaf: length of tip".

In such cases, the characteristics in the index table would be found under Leaf / tip.

Some features are relatively rare (e.g. "eyes" found in the Test Guidelines for Potato) and do not justify a dedicated row in the index table. Such features are grouped under "XX". Therefore, where there is a rare feature, it is advisable to perform a find search in the collection for the specific word (e.g "eye") as this will provide an efficient search in the collection.

Copying the characteristic

Once the desired characteristic has been found in the collection it is a simple matter of using copy/paste in Word to copy the characteristic into the TG template provided on the UPOV website (https://www.upov.int/restrict/en/tgp/tg_drafters_template_e.doc)

[End of User Notes]

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