A new variety of seeds developed at the School of Agronomy of the University of Buenos Aires became the first to be transferred in Argentina using an open-source protection system called Bioleft, which aims to become an alternative for safeguarding genetic material and biodiversity.
By Vanina Lombardi
Legend says that a group of kids from a South African tribe, who were asked to compete, held hands so they could all reach the finish line together and share the win. Upon arrival, they said “Ubuntu,” which means “if everyone wins, you win.” Hence, Ubuntu was the name chosen by the members of the Genetics Department of the School of Agronomy of the University of Buenos Aires (FAUBA) for the first variety of seeds they developed and transferred to local producer organizations with an open-source protection license, called Home.
This is a new variety of the forage plant Melilotus albus, a leguminous plant known as white clover or Russian alfalfa, which was delivered at the beginning of the month to representatives of the Organization of Indigenous Nations and Peoples in Argentina (ONPIA) and the Federation of Family Farming Organizations (FONAF), which will distribute and multiply the seed among its members in accordance with the rules agreed upon in this intellectual property system devised by a team of specialists made up of CONICET researchers working at the CENIT/UNSAM Foundation.
“Bioleft wants to guarantee the free circulation of germplasm to ensure the development of research and innovation, but also to support and encourage open and collaborative improvement,” explained Anabel Marín, a researcher at CENIT/UNSAM, who leads this project that was incubated together with the STEPS Center Latin America . She emphasized that “the idea is to use the same intellectual property system that is currently used to exclude, but to liberate.” For this reason, the project was presented during Comunes, an international gathering on collaborative economy and free culture that took place for the third consecutive year in Buenos Aires from August 15th to 17th.
NEW SEED VARIETIES REGISTERED IN ARGENTINA (1980-2017)
Source: CENIT/UNSAM, own elaboration with data from INASE’s National Register of Cultivars (RNC).
For this purpose, Bioleft includes a legal section (inspired by creative commons or open source licenses used, for example, for software) that establishes a transfer contract or agreement with a clause stipulating that, when plant material is transferred, the recipient cannot impose access restrictions for research, development, or registration of new varieties, and that all derivatives must also be transferred with the same clause.
In addition, the system will feature a web platform developed with open source code by the software cooperative Gcoop, which will enable the georeferencing and recording of transfers made under these licenses, in order to track the transferred seeds and detect cases of non-compliance with the contract. It will also enable the collection of information to facilitate access to technological support and collaborative improvement processes.
“The system is opening up and will adapt to the demands of those who use it. For example, we realized that farmers want closer ties to the scientific system,” explained Marín. He added that, although they are currently working with public sector breeders, such as FAUBA and the National Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA), they have also begun to forge strategic alliances with representatives of farmers’ organizations and with actors who generally do not have the opportunity to meet each other, since previous research on the local seed industry found that one of the greatest assets for improvement is experimentation networks. In addition, the group is part of a global open seed research network.
Common harvest
“Another advantage of Bioleft is that it can coexist with any legal system,” Marín noted. This is particularly relevant in order to address a global trend toward patenting genetic material, which has sparked an ongoing debate in Argentina, where two conflicting regulations coexist: one for patents and another for seeds. The former restricts access to these assets, while the latter preserves the rights of breeders and researchers who want to study or work with them.
“Between four and five companies dominate the global seed supply,” said Anabel Marín.
This is because the current Seed Law (20,247) was introduced in 1973, when the seeds grown in the country were mainly hybrids and science had not yet made it possible to add parts of other organisms to them. But everything changed with advances in biotechnology, which allowed for the development of genetically modified crops, including “technological events” that some consider patentable. The Patent Law, meanwhile, dates back to the mid-1990s (when the first transgenic soybeans entered the country and radically changed the local agricultural model) and allows for the registration of developments that are “inventions.”
In this way, in a laboratory, patentable genetic modifications can be incorporated into registered varieties (within the seed law) – something that, in general, is only within the reach of large biotechnology companies due to the complexity and costs of the process – and, given the materiality of these goods, the patent owner would be indirectly appropriating the thousands of other genes that make up the seed, including those of the plant breeder who stabilized the registered variety and the work of thousands of years of farmers who selected the best seeds, harvest after harvest.
“If access to seeds is restricted, not only is access to the main input for producing much of the food restricted, but also to the vast source of information and materials needed to develop new characteristics that are constantly required to address problems in the agricultural system, such as adaptation to climate change, disease, and even the practice of different types of agriculture,” said Marín. The specialist warned that since seed patenting began to be implemented, the free exchange of seeds has ceased to be a common practice and has led to a high degree of market concentration, since patenting is complex and costly.
“Between four and five companies dominate the global seed market,” said the specialist, warning that, in the particular case of Argentina, the participation of local companies in this sector is also declining, particularly in the public sector. “That is why it is urgent to think about how to address this with an alternative proposal,” she said. She concluded: “The current model tends to destroy diversity, while the open source model relies on it and uses it as a strength. In the past, seeds were always worked with a logic of common goods. We propose returning to that logic with the support of new technologies.”