Plant breeding, biodiversity loss and intellectual property rights

Dwijen Rangnekar

No 2000-5, Economics Discussion Papers from School of Economics, Kingston University London

Abstract: There is a general perception that modern agroecosystems have a negative biodiversity impact. The adverse implications are a reflection of modern varieties being bred from a narrow circle of parental genetic material and of the high level of genetic uniformity of the varieties. Existing literature suggests that the adoption of low-diversity agroecosystems is favoured because of possibilities of exploiting scale economies from the use of standard tools and knowledge. This trajectory of development is subsequently globalised because of path dependency and lock-in effects. The paper sheds a novel insight on this issue by historically examining the breeding of genetically uniform varieties. Institutional factors, like intellectual property rights, that reinforce the bias towards genetic uniformity are also examined. The paper concludes that the system of intellectual property rights were developed in a specific manner to provide juridical legitimisation to the breeding of genetically uniform varieties.

Keywords: Plant breeding; intellectual property rights; genetic diversity; genetic erosion. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O30 Q00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2000-01-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://staffnet.kingston.ac.uk/~ku33681/RePEc/kin/papers/2000_005.pdf Full text (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:ris:kngedp:2000_005

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Discussion Papers from School of Economics, Kingston University London Kingston University London, School of Economics, Penrhyn Road, Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, KT1 2EE, UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Andrea Ingianni ().