ICAR - KVK East Sikkim Organizes Awareness Program for Protection of Local Land Races under PPV & FR ACT- 2001
In order to provide the establishment of an effective system for protection of plant varieties, it has been considered to recognize and protect the rights of the farmers in respect of their contribution made at any time in conserving, improving and making available plant genetic resources. “The Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights (PPV&FR) Act 2001” has been initiated with an objective to adopt sui generis system rectifying the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of the Intellectual Property Rights for effective provision to the Agreement. The PPV & FR Act (2001) is not only in conformity with International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV), 1978, but also has sufficient provisions to protect the interests of public/private sector breeding institutions and the farmers. The legislation recognizes the contributions of both plant breeders and farmers in breeding activity for new varieties to specific socio-economic interests of all the stakeholders including farmers. In order to create awareness about PPV&FR Act, ICAR KVK East Sikkim, Ranipool organized one day awareness program at Rhenock Gram Panchayat Bhawan, East Sikkim on February 27, 2015. A total of 125 numbers of progressive farmers from Rhenock and Tarpin Gram Panchayat Unit attended the program. All the Panchayat Presidents, Vice Presidents, Panchayat Secretaries and Members of two GPUs were present in the programme.
Chief Guest of the programme Dr. R. K Avasthe, Joint Director, ICAR Sikkim Centre in his address highlighted the importance of this program and motivated the farmers to protect their indigenous local landraces by registering them in PPV & FR Authority. He also briefed that Sikkim is blessed with plenty of local genetic diversity of different field crops, which are expected to be more adaptive to changing climate. He encouraged the farmers for registration of these land races under the Act.
Dr. Raghavendra Singh, Program Coordinator (I/c) and Senior Scientist (Agronomy) expressed his gratitude to all the participants and guests at the beginning of the programme. He made an overview on Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmer’s Rights Acts (PPVFRA) and PPV & FR Authority for registration, collection and documentation of plant genetic resources and highlighted the importance of this program and motivated the farmers to understand the role of indigenous local landraces in food security of the region.
In the beginning of the program, Shri K.K. Pradhan, Zilla Parishad Member, Rhenock welcomed the gathering and expressed his gratitude towards the efforts of ICAR for encouraging the farmers to conserve the important local landraces for the benefit of farming community of the region. He further lauded the individuals, farmers club and the community to extract the benefit of the programme and to protect their indigenous germplasm for their own benefits.
In the technical session Dr. Janak Kumar Singh, SMS (Plant Breeding) highlighted the procedure for registering a variety by the farmers. On the other hand, Shri Boniface Lepcha, SMS (Horticulture) detailed the benefits of registration, licensing and infringement, penalties and procedures in PPV&FRA.
