Freeing Crop Genetics through the Open Source Seed Initiative

Claire H Luby and Irwin L Goldman

PLOS Biology, 2016, vol. 14, issue 4, 1-6

Abstract: For millennia, seeds have been freely available to use for farming and plant breeding without restriction. Within the past century, however, intellectual property rights (IPRs) have threatened this tradition. In response, a movement has emerged to counter the trend toward increasing consolidation of control and ownership of plant germplasm. One effort, the Open Source Seed Initiative (OSSI, www.osseeds.org), aims to ensure access to crop genetic resources by embracing an open source mechanism that fosters exchange and innovation among farmers, plant breeders, and seed companies. Plant breeders across many sectors have taken the OSSI Pledge to create a protected commons of plant germplasm for future generations.This Community Page article highlights the Open Source Seed Initiative, which serves as an alternative to restrictive intellectual property rights and is working to develop an open-source release mechanism for crop plant diversity, analogous to that developed for open-source software.

Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002441 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article/file ... 02441&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pbio00:1002441

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1002441

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS Biology from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosbiology ().