Intellectual Property Rights for Maize Varieties of India: A Case Study

Maize is an important crop of India, playing major role in human food, animal feed, poultry feed, starch, brewery and seed. The organized research on maize improvement started in the year 1957 under All India Coordinated Maize Improvement Project, which was further upgraded to Directorate of Maize Research (DMR) in January, 1994. DMR plays a key role in co-ordination of research and development of maize crop. The effort of maize improvement project has been extremely successful with the release of hybrids and composites. In order to protect plant varieties, through the process of registration, the Government of India has established sui generis legal system i.e. ‘‘Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act, 2001’. DMR played a key role in filing applications for protection as it has been identified as nodal centre and filed 105 applications for protection under PPV&FR Authority and becomes the leading among public institutions as far as filing of applications for protection is concerned. Out of these 70 have been granted the registration certificates, six completed two year of DUS testing, eight completed one year of DUS testing and rest are under processing.