Duda Farm Fresh Foods receives celery variety patents

Tag : celery
Duda Farm Fresh Foods receives celery variety patents

09/30/2008
Duda Farm Fresh Foods, which owns one of the world's larger celerybreeding programs, has been granted two additional patents for newcommercial celery varieties.
The new varieties, ADS-11 and ADS-2, come from more than 1,200lines developed for company trials each year to create celeryvarieties for Duda Farm Fresh Foods' retail and foodservicecustomers.
To protect its proprietary celery varieties, the company hasadopted DNA "fingerprinting" technology.
"While the patent provides the strongest protection and grantslegal recourse for the company against any person or entity caughtworking with our proprietary varieties, you have to be able toidentify your varieties and your proof has to be clear cut. DNAtesting and DNA markers are the strongest proof," Larry Pierce,manager of seed research for Duda Farm Fresh Foods, said in a pressrelease.
Duda Farm Fresh Foods put several years of effort and investmentinto testing different technologies to develop the best methods tocreate DNA "fingerprints" for each variety.
"Like every person's fingerprints are unique, so is the DNA inevery plant variety," Dr. Pierce explained. "Now we're utilizingthis technology with all of our varieties, so we have an additionallayer of protection for our commodities."
The DNA system used by Duda Farm Fresh Foods enables the company toidentify its varieties on the grocery store shelf, rather thantesting the seed. The newest celery variety patents - both awardedin April 2008 - join six other celery patents in addition to fivecelery plant variety protections, the press release said. Thecompany has six additional celery variety patents pending.
The firm, which also has a radish breeding program, additionallyreceived a patent for a new radish variety, ADS-10, in April. Itcurrently has one radish PVP.
Duda Farm Fresh Foods is a wholly owned subsidiary of Duda, afamily- owned, diversified land company, headquartered in Oviedo,FL.