Protection of Plant Varieties Act

India enacted the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act in 2001 for the protection of plant varieties, the rights of farmers and plant breeders and to encourage the development of new plant varieties. The Act is the first of its kind in granting intellectual property rights not only to the plant breeders but also to the farmers by protecting new, extant and farmers’ varieties.

Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Authority was established in New Delhi in November 2005 as per provision under the Act. Registration of plant varieties was started by the Authority with 12 crop species in 2007 and now 114 crop species are covered under the umbrella of PPV&FRA for granting IPR.

Nearly, 78 distinctiveness, uniformity and stability (DUS) test centers have been established in State Agriculture Universities (SAU), Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE), Centre of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) & other reputed research institutes. Half of the 12351 applications received so far for registration are of farmers varieties.

A total of 2290 certificates of registration have been granted, out of which 1441 certificates were granted in last two and half years. With respect to registration of farmers’ varieties, a total of 852 certificates have been issued out of which 800 certificates were issued during last two and half years. National Gene Bank for conserving seeds of registered varieties and field gene banks have been established at SAUs for conserving genes of perennial crops.

The Authority established two Branch offices at Ranchi and Guwahati and opening of other four branch offices are in under consideration. The Authority has organised 1278 programs for awareness and capacity building of different stakeholders and has published literature in vernacular language for effective communication with farmers of States.

The Authority is operating the National Gene Fund constituted by Government of India under section 45 of the Act. Amongst other things, the fund is also utilised for supporting the conservation and sustainable use of genetic resources including in-situ and ex-situ collections. As per provisions of section 70 (2)(a) of the PPV&FR Rules, 2003, the Govt. of India in consultation with the Authority instituted the Plant Genome Saviour Community Award (five awards of Rs.10 lakhs each). The awards are being conferred on August 24.