Registration of plant varieties from Feb 20

The registration of plant varieties under the sui generis system (specifically evolved own system) of plant variety protection mooted in the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers Rights Act, 2001, will formally begin from the third week of this month.

The Protection of Plant Variety and Farmers' Rights Authority (PPV&FRA) set up in November 2005 for this purpose will, to begin with, start documentation and registration of varieties of 12 crops from February 20.

These crops are rice, wheat (bread wheat types), maize, sorghum (jowar), pearl millet (bajra), chickpea (chana), pigeon pea (arhar), green gram (mung), black gram (urad), lentil (masur), field pea (matar) and kidney bean (rajmah).

The registration of varieties of these crops with this authority will provide them internationally recognised protection against piracy.

The global agreement on trade related intellectual property rights (TRIPs) gives the countries the right to either start patenting of plant varieties or provides them protection under a sui generis system of protection. India had opted for the latter and passed the Protection of Plant Variety and Farmers' Rights Act in 2001.

The authority set up for this purpose in November 2005 is headed by S Nagarajan, former director of the New Delhi-based Indian Agriculture Research Institute. It has already evolved the detailed rules and regulations and crop-specific guidelines for seeking this protection.

A two-day meeting to create awareness about the plant varieties' registration procedures has been convened in Delhi on February 20 and 21. The registration work will also be formally launched on this date by Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar.

Since Indian law goes beyond variety protection and also provides protection to the rights of farmers and farm communities in evolving, preserving and refining crop varieties, a new programme of giving recognition to these communities is also being launched simultaneously. Called plant genome savior community recognition, this programme will be financed from the proposed gene fund to be set up under this Act.

Such recognition and rewards will also be given to the farmers, farm communities or plant variety conservers who have, in the past, contributed valuable material for breeding new plant varieties, according to Nagarajan.

The application form for this purpose has been put on the website of the authority www.plantauthority.in.

The recognition could be in the form of 'Kisan Puraskar' and can be given annually to promote diversity conservation and usage in plant variety development," Nagarajan said.

The farmers and communities will have to provide documentary evidence to prove that they conserved, improved and made available or shared their material with active plant breeding programmes for the development of a new plant variety.

The details of the new variety and its contribution to the advancement of agriculture will also have to be provided for claiming the recognition and rewards.