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Plant Variety Protection in India
In India, much of the plant breeding work is done by public institutions like Agricultural Universities and Institutes.
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Even in US, during the 19th century the government allowed collection, development and distribution of thousands of plant varieties to encourage informal breeding by the farmers; this was done to boost agricultural production and to develop plants suitable for wide range of US climates. In 1897, over 20 million packets of free seed were distributed to farmers in USA and this practice continued till 1930, when the PPA was enacted to provide protection to crop varieties. Thus, in India we are approaching a stage, which the US had in 1930. This is in sharp contrast to many developed countries like Germany, where plant breeding work leading to the production of new plant varieties fs actually undertaken by private industry. Only in recent years, private companies have been encouraged in India to invest in plant breeding work and hence the need for some kind of protection of plant varieties.
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Under the provisions of TRIPS (a part of GAIT), India had the commitment to bring forth legislation- on Plant Breeders' Rights (PBR) or a related sui generis system for Plant Variety Protection (PVP). Following were some of the advantages for developing an effective sui generis system for PVP in India: i) this would allow the availability of superior planting material, leading to increased agricultural production: (ii) this will lead to investment by private sector not only in agricultural R and D for the development of superior varieties, but also in building up infrastructure for seed industry;
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(iii) this will encourage competition between private and public sector in the field of plant breeding, to make them effective and efficient in the larger national interest; (iv) it will meet the national obligations under the international agreement on trade (GAIT). In view of the above, Indian Government had drafted a Plant Variety Protection Act (PVPA), 1993, intended to protect the interest of the farmers as well as the private seed industry. This draft for PVP A could not be approved by the Parliament, although it was passed earlier by the Ministeries of Commerce, Law, Environment, Industry and Agriculture. The United Front Govt. in 1996 decided to review the PVPA, 1993 since there were representations by Seed Industry Associations for amendments in this Act.
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The provisions in the above Act that were not acceptable to seed industry included the following: (i) need to deposit a prescribed quantity of the protected seed with the National Gene Bank;
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(ii) compulsory licensing for seed production and compulsory certification; (iii) need to compensate the farmers, when the variety does not give the promised yield.Seed industry also demanded that the volume of the seed saved or exchanged by the farmer should be defined. Due to problems with PVPA, 1993, a new revised draft- entitled "Plant Variety Protection and Farmers Rights Act (PVPFRA)" was prepared in 1997. In this draft, the basic objective was to give incentives to the breeders of novel varieties, so that private sector will be motivated to invest in plant breeding, leading to the availability of superior plant material to the Indian farmer.
However, the new draft neither provided adequate plant variety protection, nor did it protect farmers' rights, so that there were criticisms again by several NGOs, the latter defending the need for the provisions of farmers' rights. The Association of seed industry once again made detailed suggestions for amending the revised draft to make it truly effective and purposeful. In view of this, a "Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers Rights Act (PPV and FRA)" was drafted, which was approved by the Parliament in August, 2001.
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