Intellectual property rights (IPR) are now recognized as playing an important and multifaceted role in agriculture and rural development, especially in the use of biotechnology - a situation unimaginable a generation ago.

Dr. Ah Zakri, director of the Tokyo-based United Nations University-Institute of Advanced Studies, said, "IPRs play an important role in the biotechnology revolution due to the fact that it is the basis of ownership for the technology…What is valuable about genetic sequence is less the actual sequence itself but rather the information that sequence contains."

At the same time, Zakri noted that the increasing use of biotech crops by poor farmers and their contribution to Millennium Development Goals (MDG) is an important development for the second decade of commercialization from 2006 to 2015.

"Regardless of what we may feel about the technology and the controversy that surrounds the technology, the reality of the increasing use of biotech crops in the developing world and its contribution to the MDG needs to be taken into account," he said in his keynote speech at the SEARCA / IPGRI / ISAAA Regional Conference on IPR held in Makati hotel last week.

Consequently, he said that "IPRs [in biotechnology] have a significant role to play in the MDG debate."

He also stressed that the use of biotech crops in the developing countries "is likely to increase." This is not due to the promotion being made by the multinational corporations, but because scientists are increasingly using the technology and "farmers are eager for new crops with increased yields." He cited that the spread of genetically modified (9GM) soya in Brazil and GM cotton in India indicate the farmers' willingness to try the technology.

Taking note that biotechnology is potentially the "most powerful technology ever developed," Zakri said that its possibilities are just beginning to be understood, especially with its most significant impact with biotech crops.

Citing the 2005 data from the International Service for the Acquisition of Agribiotech Applications (ISAAA), Zakri said that 11 countries used GM crops, with Argentina, Brazil, China, Paraguay, India, South Africa, Uruguay and Mexico as among significant growers. More than one-third, or 33.9 million hectares, of the global biotech crop area in 2005 was grown in developing countries.

He added that the increasing collective impact of GM-crop production of the five principal developing countries - China, India, Argentina, Brazil and South Africa - is an important continuing trend with implications for the future adoption and acceptance of biotech crops worldwide.

The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), he said, has earlier concluded that Argentina, Brazil, China, Cuba, Egypt, India, Mexico and South Africa now have well-developed agricultural biotechnology programs and are now approaching the leading edge of biotechnology applications and have significant research policy.

The Philippines and other countries like Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand have medium-scale biotechnology programs.

The ISAAA reported that biotech crops were grown by around 8.5 million farmers - 90 percent of whom are resource-poor - in 21 countries in 2005.

The possible most significant development of the past year, Zakri said, is that Bt rice was grown commercially for the first time in 4,000 hectares in Iran. China may soon follow, having field-tested biotech rice.

Zakri underlined the significance of this development, saying that rice is the most important food crop in the world as it is grown by 250 million farmers and the principal food of 1.3 billion poorest people. He said that the commercialization of biotech rice "has enormous implications not only for the rice-growing and consuming countries in Asia, but for all biotech crops and their acceptance on the global basis."

Zakri said that IPRs play an important role at this period when science and technology had been developing rapidly that it challenges existing morals, ethics and polices, with the question of ownership over life as the most obvious and important issue.

He said, however, that the debate about IPR in agricultural biotech and development has been negative. The following are the four common concerns raised by developing countries:

1. The extensive appropriation by corporations in developed countries of IPRs in genes and plant varieties and in enabling technologies raises the concern of developing countries that their research in plant genetic resources will be stultified. It is estimated that only 6 percent of the biotech patents granted between 1990 and 1995 were from developing countries, which led to fears that biotech patents will be concentrated in few multinational and industrial seed suppliers.

2. Several notorious instances in which IPRs have been obtained by applicants from the North in relation to genetic resources obtained from the South, raising concerns that the international IPR regime, as it is maintained, encourages "biopiracy" instead of benefit sharing.

3. The tendency of patent offices in developed countries to grant broad scope patents, over both processes and species, has the effect of annexing for companies in those countries large areas of potential biotech inventions to the disadvantage of developing countries.

4. The seeking of IPRs over materials acquired from germplasm collections maintained by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) in trust for the international community has also called into question the integrity of the international IP system.

With these issues being major international concerns, and with the role of agricultural biotech as one of the key elements that are affecting the shape and boundaries of IPR regime, the World Trade Organizations' Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) Agreement is requiring most developing countries to develop their IPR regime.

In the Philippines, handling of IPR concerns on agricultural biotech is being spearheaded by the Philippine Rice Research Institute under the Department of Agriculture.

Zakri said that the fundamental problem is that the existing models of IPRs need to be adapted to the particular needs of the developing countries and the MDGs so that they will be able to support sustainable development.

One of the key challengers on the issue, he said, is the question of bioethics and the limits of IPR regime. He said that genomics has reconfigured scientific understandings and assumptions regarding the relationships between species.

It is now known that humans and chimpanzees share 99.4 percent and 98.4 percent of their genes. This relatedness extends far beyond taxonomic classification and has very real consequences for the current IPR system, which vies that genetic distinctiveness of species are greater. As a result, offices are issuing biotech patents that are broader than before.

Zakri cited 1998 patent issued for "Primate Embryonic Stem Cells" based on research with rhesus monkeys and mamorset. With the new understanding about genomics, it is possible that these patents also cover human embryonic stem cells, he said.

Overlapping patents over shared DNA may also generate negative chilling effects on future scientific research and innovations. Zakri said that the case of Syngenta's patent over the flowering of cells of rice, which in effect extended over all these issued are simply abstract difficulties.

Real-life problems, he said, have also occurred with CGIAR germplasm being subjected to patent protection by third parties. Considered as examples of biopiracy, this has caused a fundamental rethinking about the ownership and use of the precious resources.