Impact of intellectual property rights on the Indian seed industry

The Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) regime has already encouraged the participation of private sector to increase seed production in the country. Further, only effective cooperation and coordination of public and private sectors will allow farmers to have access to quality seed and thus contribute to sustainable agriculture and food security. Thus, both need to complement each other, perhaps on the basis of a division between cash crops and essential food crops as neither the private nor the public sector can fulfil agricultural requirements by itself. The patenting of seeds particularly of cotton has resulted in the revival of cotton crop with the introduction of Bt cotton in India. It was introduced in 2002–03 in our country and since then, it had performed better. The adoption of Bt cotton was about one per cent in 2002–03. At present, about 93 per cent of the cotton area of India is under the Bt cotton. Bt cotton has benefited 3.8 million farmers of our country. Therefore, we can say that patenting of seed under the TRIPS regime has proved a boom for the Indian farmers as has been proved by the revival of cotton crop in the country.