| India has joined the elite club of countries which have put in place a well-crafted intellectual property protection regime for plant varieties as required under the trade-related intellectual property rights (TRIPS) agreement. Barely one or two countries in the developing world, and none in our neighbourhood, have done so yet. |
| The Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights (PPV&FR) Authority set up for this purpose in late 2005 has formally begun accepting applications for the registration of plant varieties. This will enable seed companies and other developers of new varieties, including hybrids and transgenics, to have ownership rights over them, as also exclusive rights to market the seeds of these varieties for the ultimate benefit of the farmers. As such, this will prevent the piracy and misuse of protected material by others. Besides, this will pave the way for healthy growth of the research-based seed industry, providing farmers access to better seed for higher and superior quality production. |
| Significantly, the PPV&FR Authority has received good response from the seed sector. In about three months of opening up of the plant variety register, the Authority has received about 150 applications for the registration of new crop varieties. Interestingly, most of them are for hybrids or the parent lines meant for developing hybrids. What is particularly noteworthy is that some private companies have applied for protection to wheat material that will quite likely be used for evolving the much sought-after hybrid wheat. |
| The PPV&FR Authority seems to have done a good deal of spadework, highly technical in nature, for evolving elaborate criteria for determining the distinctness, uniformity and stability (DUS), besides the novelty, of a new variety to qualify for getting intellectual property safeguards. PPV&FR Authority chairman S Nagarajan, a well-known agricultural scientist, held a series of meetings with various stakeholders before finalising the DUS norms and the guidelines for the applicants. |
| The Authority has already published the descriptors for identifying new varieties and the locations where the varieties offered for registration would be tested to verify their characteristics. Also, it has begun publishing a monthly Plant Variety Journal of India which will enjoy the status of Gazette for notifying registered varieties and putting out other relevant information. |
| The varieties developed by public sector research organisations and farmers and farm communities will also get this protection. So also will foreign companies wanting to protect their plant varieties in India. |
| This protection, provided under the PPV&FR Act of 2001, will be along the lines of the patent protection available for industrial products and other inventions. It will be valid for 18 years for trees and vines and 15 years for other plants. |
| The Indian PPV&FR statute, enacted as sui generis legislation for plant variety protection under TRIPS is unique in the world as, apart from protecting plant breeders' rights, it retains the rights of the farmers to re-use, sell, share or exchange with their neighbours even seeds produced by themselves from legally protected varieties. However, they are barred from selling branded seeds of such varieties. |
| This apart, the law even recognises the contribution made by the farmers in conserving, improving and making available plant genetic resources over the decades and provides for benefit sharing in case these are used for evolving new varieties. Measures are included for the protection of bio-diversity as well. |
| This legislation, thus, conforms to the 1978 version of the UPOV (Union Internationale Pour La Protection Des Obtentions Vegetales) convention administered by the Geneva-based global organisation for the protection of new plant varieties. Besides, this is also compatible with Agenda 21 of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) and the global Convention on Biodiversity. This law is now being viewed as a model by other developing countries to emulate. |
| To begin with, variety registration has been opened for 12 crops. These are rice, bread wheat, maize, sorghum, pearl millet, chickpea, pigeon pea, green gram, black gram, lentil, field pea and kidney bean. Nagarajan feels the authority will soon be able to expand this list to include at least four species of cotton, two species of jute, ornamental plants like rose and chrysanthemum, oilseeds like rapeseed-mustard and sunflower, and commercial crops like sugarcane. The procedural details for these crops are being worked out and may be notified soon. |
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