Plant Variety Protection – A Review

An increasing productive agriculture helps to fight famine and malnutrition. Plant breeding plays a crucial role in enhancing crop productivity. Inclusion of Intellectual Property Rights in agricultural research and development is a reward for agriculture scientists and encourages their active participation in innovative and novel researches. India has enacted Plant Variety Protection and Farmers’ Rights Act, 2001 to provide incentives to the breeders and farmers in the form of Plant Breeders Rights and Farmers Rights. It is the only law worldwide which has taken farmers into consideration as they have been the conservers of agricultural heritage. The current plant variety protection system is based upon the use of morphological descriptors. A voluminous work hasbeen done to establish varietal identity with biochemical and molecular markers but their inclusion for obtaining plant variety protection is a debatable issue. One of the major challenges in this confront seems to be their international standardization and harmonization.