"Except Musa textilis": Navigating Access to Plants in a Post-Treaty World.

• In Event: Science, Technology, and the Regulation of Food and Agriculture #2

Abstract

The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (Treaty) was adopted in 2001 and currently has 144 signatories. The Treaty was created to facilitate the free exchange of thousands of varieties of 64 major crops for farmers, breeders, and researchers. As the most recent regulatory instrument for plants, the Treaty was intended to reconcile past grievances of benefit sharing and intellectual property rights by requiring members to provide access to any requested materials with the guarantee that no intellectual property protection could be sought for novelties derived from shared material. Why then have all member-states not behaved as the Treaty had hoped they would by facilitating free and open material exchange? Why do plant breeders in some institutions find themselves languishing in the isolation of their own limited collections? Who, if anyone, has benefitted from the Treaty and to what effect?
In this paper I focus on the effects of the Treaty on one area of plant and agricultural science: conservation in seed banks. I present results from interviews conducted with scientists at five seed banks on four continents during 2015-17. I will explore the post-Treaty sui generic systems that have been created to facilitate material exchange by institutions that have the wherewithal to do so. Comparing strategies from sites that have varying financial and bureaucratic capabilities, I show how the Treaty not only fails at its basic mission of providing access, but also creates particular hindrances for scientists in the developing world to perform their work.

Author

• Xan Sarah Chacko, Ms.