Breeding new varieties of plant species for agriculture andhorticulture is a potentially profitable business that requiresconsiderable investment of equipment, labour and time. Improvements inthe varieties of wheat sown in the UK have been partially responsiblefor a threefold increase in yield over the last fifty years. Because itis not possible to patent plant material a statutory system of PlantBreeders Rights (PBR) has been put in place to protect the interests ofthe breeders who develop new varieties of plants in the same way aspatents protect the interests of inventors who develop novel machines orprocesses. In the UK the PBR scheme is administered by the Ministry ofAgriculture Fisheries and Foods (MAFF) and it is the Ministry whichgrants PBR once it has been shown that a candidate variety satisfiesthree basic requirements of being distinct, uniform and stable (DUS).This paper describes work in progress to develop a computerised systemthat will assess the shape of chrysanthemum leaves in accordance withthe DUS guidelines and pass the description directly to the PBR database
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