Tainan, Taiwan
August 7, 2009
Source:
AVRDC - The World Vegetable
Center - Newsletter
 “Strengthening
Private and Public Research Relationships in Horticulture” was
the title of a workshop organized by the American Society for
Horticultural Science (ASHS) at its Annual Conference, held from
25-28 July 2009 in St. Louis, Missouri, USA.
Speakers from the public and private sectors presented their
vision of the future of horticulture and agronomic research, and
highlighted opportunities for industry and public
collaborations. AVRDC – The World Vegetable Center was
represented by Dr. Andreas Ebert,
Genebank Manager and Global Theme Leader - Germplasm, who came
to the ASHS workshop on behalf of Dr. Jacqueline Hughes, Deputy
Director General for Research.
We asked him to share some of the major outcomes of this
workshop.
Your presentation had the title
“Public/Private Partnerships on Effective Horticultural Research
for Development.” How was the focus on developing countries
received by the ASHS audience?
Although the audience was smaller than expected, an excellent
panel discussion ensued at the end of all
presentations, thanks to the highlevel representatives from both
the public and private sectors. The topic was considered
extremely relevant to the contemporary public/private
“landscape” and the interesting and diverse perspectives
presented by the speakers were highly appreciated. Special
mention was made of the AVRDC
presentation, and participants hope the Center will be given the
opportunity to express its views and perspectives more often in
the United States. Given the importance of the subject, along
with significant emerging opportunities, a “best practices”
session was proposed to be held every year during the ASHS
Annual
Conference. I am very confident that this exchange will benefit
all parties, especially the millions of smallholder farmers in
the developing world who are our priority target group.
Beyond this statement of will, were there already any
concrete outputs?
In fact, there are. While attending the workshop on “Asia’s
Indigenous Horticultural Crops,” I met with David Brenner,
curator of amaranth and other indigenous vegetables from the
North Central Regional Plant Introduction Station of Iowa State
University in Ames, Iowa. He takes care of a huge amaranth
collection of some 3,000 accessions of different species and
origins and is highly interested in collaborating with our
Center on amaranth and other crops in terms of germplasm
exchange, documentation, international variety trials. David
Brenner already started to load AVRDC accession identifiers for
shared accessions into the Germplasm
Resources Information Network (GRIN) database for better
crossreferencing.
How do you estimate the collaboration on a larger time frame?
This kind of collaboration will continue and will be of mutual
benefit. Thanks to this very recent personal meeting during the
ASHS Conference, direct contacts already have been established
between David Brenner and the vBSS
breeding team of the Regional Center for Africa concerning
germplasm exchange and testing of advanced breeding lines under
African conditions.
Keyword Africa: What degree of importance does the private
sector at the ASHS conference ascribe to sub-Saharan Africa?
It’s my impression that views are changing and that there is a
slow but gradual approach. In this regard it may be seminal to
look how a global player like Monsanto is moving into the field.
They talk about sharing technologies to benefit
smallholders in Africa and other regions dealing with crops that
are not at all or a very small part of the company’s principal
crop portfolio, such as vegetables. According to its
representative, Monsanto makes its technologies available to
public institutions such as USDA or the Donald Danforth Plant
Science Center in St. Louis, which is currently developing
virusresistant cassava varieties in Africa. There is also a
CIMMYT cooperative effort with support from the Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation. Intellectual property issues were not seen as
major barriers.
The conference devoted a whole workshop to the issue of
intellectual property. What were the key messages?
The workshop was sponsored by the Intellectual Property Rights
(IPR) Working Group. The intention of this workshop was to
discuss trends in protecting and licensing IP at different
public and private institutions, examine
current trends in the use of utility patents, and provide an
overview of open source approaches to technology development.
Is there anything AVRDC can learn from public sector players?
It was interesting to learn how departments at US universities
such as the Institute of International Agriculture at
Michigan State University deal with licensing. The university
holds 1835 US patents, 125 new inventions are registered each
year, and 15-20% of patented inventions get licensed. The income
from royalties reaches US$ 3-5 million per year and is mainly
derived from the release of new varieties, genes, and protocols.
The first US$ 5000 generated from an invention go fully to the
inventor. The next US$ 100,000 of royalties are shared between
inventor (33%), department (33%), and university (33%).
Thereafter, the share of the university increases steadily.
Another interesting case is the United States Department of
Agriculture (USDA) …
… which is also representing the public sector like AVRDC...
Yes, it is. I think that USDA is in a situation similar to
AVRDC. As a public sector institution, USDA has to define how it
is going to interact with public researchers as well as with
highly commercial enterprises. The USDA Agricultural Research
Service (ARS) hosts the Office of Technology Transfer and has
the sole authority for licensing inventions arising from
research in any USDA agency. The goals of the USDA Technology
Transfer Policy
are: (1) use the patent system or the variety protection system
to facilitate technology transfer; (2) provide an incentive for
investments by the private sector; (3) support small business
enterprises and entrepreneurs;
(4) support investments by US businesses in international
markets. If USDA inventions are used only for research purposes,
no licenses are required. Most licenses are exclusive, or
partially exclusive. Exclusive licenses for protected plant
varieties reserve the right to make the licensed varieties
available to third parties for research and breeding.
What are the major principles of licensing?
It is possible to obtain a Plant Variety Protection Certificate
(PVPC), a Plant Patent, and a Utility Patent for the same plant
variety. The type of protection sought is dictated primarily by
specific business requirements.
USDA-improved germplasm and advanced selections are usually
publicly released, likewise many USDA cultivars. Released
materials are deposited into the National Plant Genetic
Resources System (NPGRS) to ensure their
availability for further research and breeding and are freely
available to both public and private sector breeders. New
varieties developed solely by USDA breeders are protected only
if such protection will facilitate technology transfer.
Commercial licenses include customary payment provisions for
each particular licensed crop. However, many new varieties are
co-developed and co-owned with US land-grant universities.
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The conference devoted a
whole workshop to the issue of
intellectual property. What were
the key messages?
The workshop was sponsored by
the Intellectual Property Rights
(IPR) Working Group. The
intention of this workshop was
to discuss trends in protecting
and licensing IP at different
public and private institutions,
examine
current trends in the use of
utility patents, and provide an
overview of open source
approaches to technology
development. |
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