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65 Jingsong Li, Janice Jiggins and Yiching Song
explore and identify technological and institutional options to bridge farmers’ seed
systems and the formal seed system, integrate scientific knowledge and farmers’
knowledge in breeding and conservation,
and build mutual respect and understanding among farmers and public breeders.
Phase 1: from 2000–2003, aimed to
develop mutually beneficial partnerships
between formal breeders and communities
and build farmers’ capacity through breeding improved varieties. PPB varieties were
successfully developed, but there were difficulties in marketing PPB varieties so that
farmers could benefit (see below). Therefore, other ways to generate benefits for
farmers were explored.
Phase 2: from 2005 onwards. Farmers
suggested initiating community seed
production and marketing of varieties bred
by the team. Research focused on this
activity and drawing lessons from it.
Phase 3: beginning in 2008, the
programme started to develop ABS
contracts between plant breeders and farmers. This enabled more farmers involved in
developing PPB varieties to share in the
commercial benefits from the varieties and
agree the terms for access to farmers’
genetic resources by formal breeders.
China’s seed regulations
The formal seed release system requires
that new seed varieties must pass a series of
tests: the Value for Cultivation and Use
(VCU) test, and the Distinctiveness,
Uniformity and Stability (DUS) test. Existing seed regulations only recognise and
release varieties that pass these tests (Seed
Law, 2001). But PPB varieties are unlikely
to comply with these variety release criteria, such as VCU (i.e. value for cultivation
and use) and DUS (distinctiveness, uniformity and stability) testing which are
tailored to the characteristics of modern
varieties, while farmer improved varieties
cannot always show ‘clear improvement’
under different growing conditions, and
can hardly meet the DUS criteria (Visser,
2002; Louwaars, 2007). Four of the five
PPB varieties failed at the VCU testing
stage in 2003. Only one hybrid PPB variety
was officially released, Guinuo 2006, and
this was registered and later commercialised by GMRI breeders. For the other
varieties, the only option was to release the
seed unofficially to the surrounding farming communities. But this meant limited
recognition of the varieties in the marketplace as they were not officially released.
Intellectual property rights (IPRs)
Challenges in releasing PPB varieties
By 2007, there were more than 100 newly
bred varieties tested in on-station trials and
farmers’ fields. Five farmer-preferred maize
varieties were selected and released to the
13 trial villages. Although the programme
results showed that it benefited both farmers and formal breeders through joint
breeding and the exchange of maize
genetic resources, the programme faced
challenges in releasing the new varieties
and enabling farmers to claim benefits
from their contribution. These challenges
arose from China’s seed regulations in relation to varietal release criteria, lack of
recognition of collective intellectual property rights, and a lack of national ABS
legislation.
IPRs grant exclusive rights to individuals
or organisations, but these do not apply in
PPB, nor to landraces and varieties developed collectively by communities of
farmers. Varieties could be introduced into
China’s formal breeding system by registering them under a breeder’s name, but
this approach does not recognise farmers’
input. There was no mechanism for deciding how each stakeholder might benefit
from the sale or use of a PPB product. As a
local initiative, community-based seed
production provided a way to share both
monetary and non-monetary PPB benefits.
However, it was limited to farmers in one
trial village and at that stage there was no
formal mechanism for benefit-sharing with
other PPB farmers. An unwritten agree-