Virginie Bertoux – Research engineer, Agronomist

June 2021

The Permanent Technical Committee on Plant Breeding (CTPS) gives an advisory opinion to the Ministry of Agriculture on the inclusion of varieties in the official catalogue of cultivated plant species and varieties. It examines more than 1,000 applications every year and relies on the GEVES (Groupement d’étude et de contrôle des variétés et des semences) to assess the technical characteristics of the seeds to be registered and thus guarantee their quality. Virginie Bertoux, General Secretary of the CTPS, leads a community of some 450 members, bringing together research and stakeholders in the French seed trade. The committee’s scientists point out new challenges to which varietal selection will have to respond such as climate change and agro-ecology, illustrated recently by the case of beet yellows virus.