The EU legislation requires the setup of an EU catalogue of varieties of fruit plant propagating material and fruit plants based on Member States' national catalogues. Today the Commission's new Fruit Reproductive Material Information System (FRUMATIS) for the management of these national catalogues went online.

FRUMATIS provides information on the identification of the variety, its registration, the registration validity period, intellectual property rights, and optional information such as the breeder and maintainer of the variety. FRUMATIS is an easily consultable database aiming to increase the confidence in varieties marketed throughout the EU. The estimated value of fruit plant propagating material and fruit plants produced in the EU is above € 760 million. Two billion plants are produced on a surface of over 11.400 ha in the EU.

FRUMATIS currently lists more than 14.000 varieties of fruit plant propagating material and fruit plants. This new system allows Member States to manage themselves the publication of their national catalogues on the Commission's website. FRUMATIS uses semantic technologies that allow it to connect to publicly available structured data sources. The Commission intends to create a central hub of catalogues of agricultural and vegetable species, fruit genera/species and vine varieties.