Multilateral Regulatory Regimes and Plant Breeding

This policy brief by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) examines the conflicting international legal frameworks governing germplasm and plant breeding. It highlights the tension between intellectual property (IP) rights favored by commercial seed firms and the traditional rights of farmers and Indigenous Peoples to save, share, and sell seeds. The document provides an overview of key multilateral agreements and offers guidance for developing country governments on creating national laws that balance commercial innovation with biodiversity conservation and equity.

• International legal frameworks for germplasm are incoherent and competing, drawing from diverse areas such as trade agreements, biosecurity, biological diversity conservation, and intellectual property rights. This makes it difficult for national governments to ensure their domestic plant breeding laws comply with all international norms.
• The UPOV 1991 treaty provides breeders with exclusive rights to a plant variety for 20 years if the variety is new, distinct, homogenous, and stable. While it includes a "farmers' privilege" allowing seeds to be saved for personal consumption on their own land, it prohibits the trading or selling of those seeds.
• Under the TRIPS Agreement, WTO members are required to provide legal protection for new plant varieties through patents or an effective sui generis system. Many WTO members have adopted the UPOV 1991 framework to meet this obligation, though TRIPS does not explicitly require UPOV adherence.
• Several international instruments recognize the rights of farmers and Indigenous Peoples to manage seeds. The 2004 ITPGRFA recognizes farmers' rights to save, use, exchange, and sell farm-saved seeds, and the 2018 UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other Persons Working in Rural Areas extends these rights beyond the farmer's own land and self-consumption.
• Benefit sharing is a core objective of the CBD and the Nagoya Protocol, which requires prior informed consent and fair sharing of benefits from genetic resources. However, the primary IP frameworks (TRIPS and UPOV) do not mandate the disclosure of the source of genetic material, creating risks of misappropriation.
• The emergence of "digital sequence information" (genomic data) presents a new challenge to benefit-sharing agreements, as it is unclear if international treaties cover only physical germplasm or also the underlying genetic sequences.
• Developing countries can utilize the flexibility of the TRIPS Agreement to implement sui generis systems that protect small-scale producers. For example, India's law allows farmers to save and share protected varieties provided they do not use a trademarked brand name.

APA

International Institute for Sustainable Development (n.d.). Multilateral Regulatory Regimes and Plant Breeding. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/2020-09/multilateral-regulatory-regimes-plant-breeding.pdf

Chicago

International Institute for Sustainable Development. Multilateral Regulatory Regimes and Plant Breeding. n.d. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/2020-09/multilateral-regulatory-regimes-plant-breeding.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=International Institute for Sustainable Development |title=Multilateral Regulatory Regimes and Plant Breeding |url=https://www.iisd.org/system/files/2020-09/multilateral-regulatory-regimes-plant-breeding.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{internationalinstituteforsustainabledevelopmentndmultilateral, author = {{International Institute for Sustainable Development}}, title = {{Multilateral Regulatory Regimes and Plant Breeding}}, institution = {International Institute for Sustainable Development}, url = {https://www.iisd.org/system/files/2020-09/multilateral-regulatory-regimes-plant-breeding.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }