Plant Health Guide: passporting and marketing requirements

Plant passports for seed potatoes

If you grow seed potatoes you must be registered with SERPID for plant passporting purposes. You do this by submitting annual application forms for the Seed Potato Classification Scheme to your local SERPID Area Office.

Seed potatoes require plant passports at every stage of the trade chain (including to retailers) within the EC, regardless of whether they remain within the UK or are destined for another member state. With certain exceptions (see below), they must also carry official classification labels (provided by your local SERPID Area Office) when they are marketed. To simplify these requirements, official labels contain all the information needed to serve both classification and plant passporting purposes; separate passports are not needed.

The official label states the following information:

• member state (UK)
• country of production (Scotland)
• species
• class
• category (pre-basic, basic)
• EC grade
• variety
• crop identification including producers identification
• month and year when officially sealed
• net weight
• code ZP - d1

Seed potatoes must also be passported when moved from the farm to a packing station off the farm. Please consult your local SERPID Area Office.

Subject to certain conditions, quantities of less than 50kg of seed potatoes for retail sale do not need to carry official labels; you may need to provide plant passports for such material if it is not officially labelled. If you are involved in re-packaging of seed potatoes for supply to retail outlets you will need to be authorised to plant passport these retail packs. Please consult your local SERPID Area Office for more details.

The following information is generally added by the local SERPID Area Office to the official classification labels so that they may be used as plant passports:

• the words "EC plant passport"

• "S" (a code for the Inspectorate in Scotland)

• Protected Zone Code " ZP: F (Brittany), FI, IRL, LT, P (Azores), UK (Northern Ireland)", or " ZP d.1" - if you are moving seed potatoes within, France (Brittany), Finland, Ireland, Portugal (Azores). These areas are designated as rhizomania Protected Zones. This code indicates that the potatoes meet the special protected zone requirements for rhizomania laid down in EC Directives. As a result of the ending of the rhizomania Protected Zone in Great Britain in 2001, consideration had to be given to the movement of Scottish seed potatoes to remaining Protected Zones within Europe. As rhizomania has never been found in Scotland, SERPID believes that carrying out regular surveys of fodder beet, with particular emphasis on those growers who also grow seed potatoes in their rotation, will provide evidence of rhizomania freedom in Scotland. This will continue to allow the movement of Scottish seed potatoes into rhizomania Protected Zones. ZP a.6 will be added to the label for consignments sent to the countries listed in Appendix D to confirm the protected zone requirements for PCN have been met