dear all
some information for further consideration on barley and melon:
on the barely:
the barley breeder does not support the idea to use barley in October or December - looks like wrong time of the year. the plants would be too small to recognize them as barley (October) or might not look good (healthy) in December. Nevertheless I could try to raise some plants from the kernels I have and we see how it goes.
the other idea is, to use dried barley - however I am afraid this will not be a strong visual - it might look like a traditional Bavarian farmers ritual ...
interesting: The laboratory says that the patent application and the barley of Cultivari have the same sequence (in the decisive DNA). I am still waiting for written confirmation. This might become useful for further media work.
on the melon:
the plant as patented is seedless due polypoidy. There is even a specific para in the examination guidelines of EPO on such melons which reads:
A process for producing triploid seedless melon fruit which involves the pollination of sterile female flowers of a triploid plant, unable to carry out successful meiosis, with pollen of the diploid polliniser plant and which therefore does not concern sexually crossing two whole genomes of plants (implying meiosis and fertilisation) and the subsequent selection of plants is not an essentially biological process and is hence not excluded from patentability (T 1729/06)
so the invention is a detection (melon found in a homegarden) and then, with usual methods, is turned into seedless plant. Followed by selection without crossing. I think we should challenge and expose this absurdity. However it will require some detailed work on legal details and public communication.
Cheers
Christoph