Government to enact law for plant varieties

A new law to protect new plant varieties and give local researchers a leeway to patent their discoveries is in the offing. The minister for agriculture, food security and Cooperatives, Mr Stephen Wassira, said the process to enact the law and repeal outdated ones was underway. Mr Wassira revealed this yesterday when opening a one week international seminar on Plant Variety Protection. The meeting was held at a Dar es Salaam hotel. "We have started the process to amend our Plant Breeders' Rights Act, 2002. We shall soon have a new law to allow our breeders register within the international system new varieties for protection," he said. The meeting comes amid reports that Tanzania was planning to go to court to stop the US and Brazilian governments, jointly with two multinational firms, from patenting a sorghum gene isolated from Tanzanian farms. The report further mentioned researchers from the US department of agriculture, Brazil's Agricultural Research Corporation and Texas A&M University to have patented the gene with the US Patent Office in September 2009.
If allowed, the multinational corporations would then seek to exploit their patent to boost profits by selling sorghum seeds at a high price at the expense of the of the locals where the gene was extracted. According to Dr Rolf Jordens, the Vice Secretary General of the Geneva based International Union for the Protection of Plants (Upov), joining the organization was the best way for the country to give incentive to breeders as it would trigger more public and private investment in research and breeding while enjoying intellectual property rights.
"This of course encourages breeders to come up with better varieties that are commercially potential to both innovators and growers," he said. The expert elaborated that once the country becomes a member and having opened the national registration office for local breeders, unlike patenting system, the Upov convention allows them to use breeding materials from other registered breeders to obtain a more improved variety. Early this month, the Parliament of Tanzania made a declaration allowing the country to comply with the UPOV Convention, 1991. And the government has now initiated a process of amending the Plant Breeders Act of 2002 before submitting formal application for Upov-membership. Mr Wassira explained that the move would be a milestone in protecting the rights of the local breeders, whose works have been, for many years, published unnoticed and that it was a high time for them to reap from their innovations.

SOURCE Citizen newspaper