A brief report on One-Day Awareness Programme on Protection

of Plant Varieties and Farmer’s Rights (PPV&FR) Act, 2001 on

Agriculture, Bhubaneswar

ICAR-Central Institute for Women in

Agriculture, Bhubaneswar organized

CIWA campus along with the

celebration of Nationwide Interaction

programme on Garib Kalyan

Sammelan. Five Hundred farmers and farmwomen from 10 villages from 4 districts of Odisha

including staff of ICAR-CIWA and scientists

from ICAR-IIWM participated in this

awareness programme.

At the beginning of the programme Dr

Biswanath Sahoo, Principal Scientist, ICAR-

CIWA welcomed all the dignitaries, guests

right and said that this single act provides an

effective system for the protection of plant

varieties, the right of farmers, plant breeders and also encourages the development of new

varieties of plant.

The speakers of the awareness programme, Dr

Laxmipriya Sahoo, Senior Scientist, and Dr

Tania Seth, Scientist, ICAR-CIWA presented the

information related to protecting their rights in

the areas of farm innovations, breeding and

protection of varieties including PPV&FR Act,

participants on the scope of farmer’s right

earmarked in International Treaty on Plant

Genetic Resources, which formed a reference for

developing laws for protection of plant varieties

worldwide. The genesis and implementation of

PPV&FR Act-2001 as an Alternative Sui Generis PVP Legislation to safeguard the enormous

contribution to the local and indigenous communities and farmers of all regions of the world,

particularly those in the centres of origin and crop diversity, have made and will continue to

make for the conservation and development of plant genetic resources which constitute the basis

of food and agriculture production throughout the world. They emphasized on the farmer’s

Government of India has established an authority named as

Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights Authority,

situated at New Delhi and ICAR-CIWA is authorized to receive

application for new plant variety for this region. They further told

that the registration of plant variety is based on the Distinctness,

Uniformity and Stability testing criteria. The speakers lauded the

efforts of farmwomen in biodiversity conservation and guided them for earning livelihood

through sustainable use of the biodiversity and rural seed network development using some

conserved varieties with promising agronomical traits. The benefit sharing and gene fund

concepts were discussed in detail. The speakers interacted

with the participants.

Dr. Arun Kumar Panda, Principal Scientist and Incharge,

Institute Technology Management Unit, ICAR-CIWA said

that farmers can also get monetary benefit on registration

of their plant varieties as this will lead to

right of farmers, plant breeders and also encourages the development of new varieties of plant.

Hence, farmwomen must take the opportunity to register their varieties and ensure their

sustainable use through community involvement. He also requested the farmwomen to acquaint

themselves with the terms like Gene Fund and Benefit sharing.

The programme was ended by the formal vote of thanks delivered by Dr. Biswanath Sahoo.