The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) has set up a specialised intellectual property rights (IPR) cell to cope with the challenges of bio-piracy in the post-World Trade Organisation (WTO) era. It has already started functioning.
Announcing this at the 72nd annual general meeting of the ICAR society, here, today, ICAR director-general RS Paroda said the cell has already examined 42 applications for patent. Of these, 25 have been filed with the Patent Office.
Scientists were also being trained to deal with issues relating to IPR, genetic resources, bio-diversity and WTO agreement on agriculture (AOA) in the light of its impact on national agriculture.
He said conservation of plant genetic resources was being given the highest priority by the ICAR.
A large number of expeditions have been undertaken by the scientists to explore and catalogue the country
