Fostering Innovation for Agriculture 4.0 - A Comprehensive Plant Germplasm System

The scientific and technical development of any kind of germplasm is regulated by a vast network of treaties, conventions, international agreements, and national and regional legislation. These regulations govern biotechnological innovations in plants and microorganisms, access to and use of plant genetic resources, and biosafety. This complex mix has made it difficult to arrive at global interpretations, due to overlaps, gaps, ambiguities, contradictions, and lack of consistency. The big picture is even more complex, as a series of scientific developments - gene editing in particular - have in some cases rendered these international regulatory frameworks obsolete.

This book puts forward an innovative approach: a 'Comprehensive Plant Germplasm System'. The System is a cooperative game theory-based proposal for a binding international convention which would supersede all other conventions, treaties, national and regional legislation covering native varieties and traditional developments, heterogeneous plant varieties, microorganisms, biotechnological inventions, plant genetic resources, and biosafety regulation. 

In short, it offers a comprehensive framework regarding intellectual property, biosafety, and business regulation and covers all types of germplasm.

If applied, the system is expected to yield higher productivity rates in crops and improved food biodiversity, as well as a new paradigm based on the promotion of innovation for 'Agriculture 4.0.'

Dr. Miguel Rapela is an agricultural engineer specializing in genetics and plant breeding and holds a Ph.D. in Forestry and Agricultural Sciences from the National University of La Plata, Argentina, with a focus on intellectual property and regulatory matters. He is Executive Director of Research and Consulting at the Austral University Intellectual Property Centre, and a Professor and a member of the Academic Committee for the MSc course in Intellectual Property at the same University. He is also Head of Technology Transfer for the Genomic Platform, UBATEC SA and member of the Technical Committee of the Argentine Seed Commission (CONASE). 

He has been President of the Faculty of Agronomy Foundation (National University of Buenos Aires), a member of the Argentine Advisory Commission on Agricultural Biotechnology (CONABIA), Executive Director of the Argentine Seed Association (ASA) and of the Argentine Association of Plant Breeders (ArPOV), and Chairman of the Intellectual Property Committees of the International Seed Federation (ISF) and of the Seed Association of the Americas (SAA). He has published more than 120 technical papers and five books on intellectual property and regulatory matters, and has developed several new plant varieties registered at the Argentine National Seed Institute (INASE).