The international UPOV Convention sets out a system of plant breeder's rights that is rooted in a phenotypic paradigm of plant protection.  

These laws describe and abstract plants using lists of carefully defined morphological characteristics, making them identifiable and amenable to intellectual property control.  

Recently, the increasing affordability and effectiveness of sequencing technology has led to consideration of the potential of molecular markers for describing and identifying plant varieties, and for resolving disputes about essential derivation.  

Genotypic descriptions of plants have the advantage of being environmentally independent, measurable without conducting a growing trial, and capable of providing quantitative assessments of difference between varieties.