Impact of Vegetable Breeding Industry and Intellectual Property Rights in Food Security

Abstract

Vegetable plant breeding is characterized by continuous irmovations and the ever ongoing development of new cultivars that ever better meet the requirements of producers and consumers. The driving force behind this irmovation is acquiring or increasing market share. Access to technology, as well as biodiversity, is essential for the development of new vegetable cultivars. The plant breeder’s rights system is a specifically designed legal system for the protection of plant cultivars. Plant breeder’s rights give the developer of a new cultivar the right to exclude others from commercialization. Two intelectual property rights are relevant for the protection of irmovations in this sector: plant breeder’s rights and patent rights. Some exemptions play an important role in plant breeding, such as the “breeder’s exemption”. The breeder’s exemption, that is not considered in patent rights, ensures that other breeders may in a sort of “open innovation” use such a protected cultivar in their own breeding 176programme, making the best properties of these cultivars available to the breeding programmes of competitors. Great emphasis on protection of cultivars by seed companies, including development of Fl hybrids, plant cultivar protection and patenting have been done. The patent rights in combination with technological developments in molecular biology have in recent decades led to a large consolidation move among seed companies. Plant breeder’s rights and patent rights may be conflicting in plant breeding. Specific liberties of breeders and farmers are lost with the patentability of plant-related inventions. The global seed trade is now dominated by international corporations whose vast economic power has effectively marginalized the role of public sector plant breeding and local, small and even medium-scale seed companies. Some of these companies belong to worldwide corporations that are also involved with pesticides and biotechnology. For most vegetable crops only a few multinational seed companies are controlling large part of the world market. This makes a growing part of the global vegetable supply dependent on a few seed companies. The multinational seed companies concentration in huge corporations have merged or canceled some vegetable breeding programs to reduce costs. Then there will be fewer vegetable breeders in the fut-are and the producers will be dependent on a narrower genetic background, that could contribute in a near future, for biodiversity reduction and food insecurity. A clear distinction must be made between intellectual property rights on technology for use in plant breeding and intellectual property rights on genetic traits of vegetables. The conflict between plant breeder’s rights and patent rights is in fact restricted to rights on and the availability of plant traits. Patents on genetic material, the way in which these are granted and the way in which rights are handled are important causes of the decrease in biodiversity of breeding companies and threaten to obstruct irmovation in vegetable breeding. The intellectual property protection laws for plants must be made less restrictive to encourage research and free flow of materials and information. Patent policy should contribute to a proper balance between the rights and obligations of patent holder and society. Access to “advanced” genetic resources is an important condition for a healthy and irmovative plant breeding sector and food security. Active and positive cormections between the private and public breeding sectors and large-scale gene banks are required to avoid a possible conflict involving breeders’ rights, gene preservation, erosion and food security.