The Use of Intellectual Property Systems in Plant Breeding for Ensuring Deployment of Good Agricultural Practices

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper contains a competent introduction to the role of patents and plant variety rights in relation to good agricultural practices. It ignores other intellectual property (IP) rights that may be relevant, such as geographical indications and trade secrets.

In relation to patents, mention should have been made of the patenting of plant breeding methods (eg the recent broccoli and tomatoes cases).

More than half of the article is taken up with case studies relevant to integrated resistance management, without explaining the relevance of IP to this issue.

Author Response

Our responses to the reviewers, point-by-point:

Reviewer 1.

• The paper contains a competent introduction to the role of patents and plant variety rights in relation to good agricultural practices. It ignores other intellectual property (IP) rights that may be relevant, such as geographical indications and trade secrets.

> We acknowledge the existence of other IP, notable these examples, and it has been inserted at the beginning of section 2.1, combined with our reaction to a remark of Reviewer 2.

 

• In relation to patents, mention should have been made of the patenting of plant breeding methods (eg the recent broccoli and tomatoes cases).

> We now describe the development of patentability of these methods and the underlying native traits of the plants by EPO in a new paragraph. We have tried to keep it short as it is a complicated issue and it is of limited relevance to the topic of the manuscript.

 

• More than half of the article is taken up with case studies relevant to integrated resistance management, without explaining the relevance of IP to this issue.

> In various sections we have tried to mention the IP aspects of the case studies more explicitly. We also refer to them in the Discussion more explicitly.

Reviewer 2 Report

see attached file Comments on Agronomy ms 1233067.docx

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Reviewer 2.

Line 60 First and foremost, the Plant Breeders’ Rights (PBR, also called Plant variety protec-

REV I would suggest replacing first and foremost with The most globally utilized IP system for the protection of new plant varieties is...

• This has been modified accordingly.

Lines 76-77 The US has a separate system of plant variety protection for vegetatively propagated varieties, which is called, perhaps confusingly, a ‘plant pa-

REV I think your wording adds to the confusion. I would recommend—The US also provides for PVP/PBR and in addition, since 1930 has provided a similar type of protection for new varieties of non tuberous asexually propagated species, perhaps confusingly termed as a “plant patent”.

• Thanks for the suggestion, which we have adopted.

Lines 79-80

I’d suggest you state right from the outset that utility patents are granted on a country-or in the case of the EU on a regional basis and as a result scope and conditions for granting utility patents can vary in any respects among countries.

• This suggestion has also been followed.

Line 89 They operate independently of each other Line 89 0nwards

Somewhere you need to add that in contrast to the EU the US does grant utility patent protection on plant varieties per se.

• This suggestion has also been followed.

P191

Somewhere you need to add that build up of resistances be it in insects, fungi, weeds is an inevitable product of biology most especially in the case of single gene resistances-the build of resistant strains of pathogens is not a result of biotechnology per se but rather use of single gene resistances which predates transgenics.

• This has been added at the end of the Introduction.

And connected to the above comment:

Lines 210 211 Despite all arrangements discussed above, compliance is poor in many regions of the US. Half of the cases of reduced effectiveness of Bt reported have occurred in the US (Car-

I do not believe it is possible to cite incidence of resistant strains as a measure of the effectiveness of compliance. Yes, failure to comply will surely add to the inevitable biological fact that resistances will develop to single gene traits—but that’s as far as you can state vis a vis compliance.

• This is a good reasoning. To address the concern we have removed ‘half of the cases’ in the US. Carriere et al. made a more direct link to a few studies and these have been added.

Surely enforcement of compliance is a major issue-just how practical is it to monitor?

• Monitoring is a very important aspect, and we have increased emphasis on it in the revision, both as the inclusion of the right to monitor in the licence contracts between breeders and farmers and as a task that competent authorities may carry out to support the activities of breeders to enforce GAP.

Lines 269-270 Thus, IRM should start with stacking of resistance genes, which may be required through conditional licensing, to create varieties with potentially durable disease resistance. The proper implementation of IRM during cultivation of resistant varieties

REV OK I heard and understood the arguments made 50 years ago during my BSc degree that horizontal resistances were far more durable than vertical (single gene). This is surely true-and you mentioned earlier how different forms of resistances are stacked—but why should this be mandated now when it wasn’t 50 years ago? I don’t disagree that it’s the better approach but is it really possible legally to mandate that a useful single gene that can provide resistance now should not be deployed until other versions are also bred in?

Nonetheless, congratulations for raising the issue!

• We actually already gave an example in the MS, namely GAP conditions as part of the authorization of resistance gene events by EPA. Otherwise, breeders may try to steer towards sustainable use as it is in their interest, and that has been emphasized as well.

I think you discussion would get your message across better if you focused the discussion more on your primary goal—how to achieve better stewardship

Focus on ways/examples to achieve this
Eg move the information about refuge in a bag up to or incorporate in para 2 of the discussion. Is para 3 really relevant to your main goal?

Is much of para 4 really relevant-keep the problems that may arise pieces

• We have revised the Discussion to achieve more focus. Some parts have been reduced in length, others have been expanded or added, and the order of the paragraphs has also been changed.