plants – Techdirt (original) (raw)

DailyDirt: Combining Biology And Machines…

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Nature has had a few billion years to evolve some pretty useful abilities, but people are always trying to improve upon what’s already available. One of the big challenges is creating an interface between biological mechanisms and various electronic devices. Implanting electrodes into brains or having insects control robot bodies are ongoing experiments — and there are a few other projects combining biology and machines that could be even more cutting edge.

• Cyborg roses have been grown with electrically-conducting wires in the flower’s xylem — its vascular system that usually transports water throughout the plant. This could be an important first step towards making plants that can be controlled or used as sensors. Or it could start some kind of cross between The Happening and Terminator. [url]
• Phil Kennedy has developed brain-computer interfaces since the 1980s, but he took his research to an extreme by getting his own brain implant. It was getting difficult to find healthy people to volunteer for a brain surgery to implant electrodes, so Kennedy paid a surgeon to do it to himself. Complications forced him to remove the implants after about a month, but he gathered some data during his time as a cyborg that might help further brain research in speech decoding. Still, it’s not exactly the best way to conduct brain research when there are concerns about safety and reproducibility. [url]
• Ray Kurzweil predicts a lot of far out stuff, and he thinks nanobots will connect our brains directly to external computers — allowing us to access information and ideas at a faster and broader scale than ever before. Kurzweil says our abilities will become “godlike” — but it depends on which gods we become like, really. (e.g., tormented gods or jealous ones or…) [url]

After you’ve finished checking out those links, check out this holiday gift guide for some awesome deals at the Techdirt deals store.

Filed Under: brain computer interface, brain research, cyborg, hmi, implants, nanobots, phil kennedy, plants, ray kurzweil

DailyDirt: Creating Superfoods For Fun Profit

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Feeding billions of people isn’t an easy task. Farming isn’t actually the hardest part. Food distribution and food waste are much more challenging than simply growing more food for people. It’s good that we have multiple biotech solutions for making plants and animals that are easier to raise and grow, but some of the concerns about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) aren’t totally unfounded. Turning back the clock on genetic research isn’t going to happen, but we should also keep an eye on what’s going on.

• Dupont and Caribou Biosciences are working on CRISPR technology to modify the genes of food crops, predicting that CRIPSR GMO foods will be on dinner plates by 2020. Genetically modified corn and wheat plants are already being grown in greenhouses, and many other plants are being tested, too: soybeans, rice, tomatoes, potatoes — even allergy-free peanuts. The resulting plants have no genes from other species, so it may be much easier to avoid GMO regulations with these kind of gene-edited crops. [url]
• Yum yum. A succulent red marine algae called dulse looks like translucent red lettuce, is high in protein, and tastes like bacon when cooked. This strain of dulse is patented, but the claims don’t mention its bacon-y goodness. So get back in the lab and start creating more bacon-flavored species, already! [url]
• Many scientists are hard pressed to find the harm in creating genetically modified organisms — because genes are genes. However, there are still concerns with monoculture crops and creating a food supply chain that is dominated by a handful of companies. [url]

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Filed Under: algae, bacon, biotech, crispr, dulse, farming, food, food supply chain, genes, genetics, gmo, plants
Companies: caribou biosciences, dupont

African Nations Agree To Plant Variety Treaty; Traditional Farmers' Group Shut Out From Negotiations

from the definitely-not-suspicious dept

Techdirt has been covering discussions to establish a harmonized pan-African legal framework for the protection of plant breeders’ rights for a couple of years now, in particular the fears that this will benefit Western seed companies the most, at the expense of Africa’s plant diversity and seed independence. As the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) website reports, what is now known as the “Arusha Protocol for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants” has been agreed:

> The ARIPO Protocol for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants has been adopted by the Diplomatic Conference that was held in Arusha, the United Republic of Tanzania on July 6, 2015. > > ? > > The Protocol seeks to provide Member States with a regional plant variety protection system that recognizes the need to provide growers and farmers with improved varieties of plants in order to ensure sustainable Agricultural production. > > Eighteen Member States of the Organization were represented at the Diplomatic Conference namely; Botswana, The Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, São Tomé and Pr?ncipe, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Swaziland, United Republic of Tanzania, Uganda Zambia and Zimbabwe.

As well as those African nations, a number of international organizations took part in the discussions: the World Intellectual Property Organization, the EU’s Community Plant Variety Office, France’s National Seeds and Seedlings Association, the United States Patent and Trademark Office and the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants. The inclusion of representatives from the US, EU and French plant organizations is indicative of some of the key driving forces behind the Arusha Protocol. That stands in stark contrast to a rather significant absence from the talks: the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA), an association that champions “Small African Family Farming/Production Systems based on agro-ecological and indigenous approaches.” AFSA writes on its site:

> Despite AFSA’s well-established track record of constructive engagement with ARIPO on the Draft ARIPO PVP Protocol, and despite it being a Pan African network of African regional farmers and NGOs, working with millions of African farmers and consumers, AFSA was purposely excluded from the Arusha deliberations.

This is not the first time that AFSA has been unwelcome at ARIPO meetings, as we reported last year. That’s presumably because AFSA has long-standing concerns about the whole move towards giving plant breeders greater rights in Africa. Here’s its view on the new Protection of New Varieties of Plants (PVP) protocol:

> The Arusha PVP Protocol is part of the broader thrust in Africa to ensure regionally seamless and expedited trade in commercially bred seed varieties for the benefit, mainly, of the foreign seed industry. Multinational seed companies intend to lay claim to seed varieties as their private possessions and to prevent others from using these varieties without the payment of royalties. > > Germplasm developed by farming households over centuries is increasingly under threat of privatisation; and ecologically embedded farming practices risk being destabilised and dislodged. The broader modernisation thrust of which the Arusha PVP Protocol is an intrinsic part, is designed to facilitate the transformation of African agriculture from peasant-based production to inherently inequitable, inappropriate and ecologically damaging Green Revolution/industrial agriculture. Such a transformation will lead to many farming households being threatened with marginalisation or extinction, without alternative options for survival.

While AFSA is worried that the new Protocol will harm traditional cultivation practices, supporters claim that it will lead to more and better plant varieties being created, to the benefit of farmers. That would obviously be welcome, assuming it isn’t simply a cover for multinational companies to privatize and industrialize Africa’s food production. Unfortunately, the refusal to allow the participation of representatives of traditional African farming in drawing up the new Arusha Protocol has to raise fears that this is precisely what is planned.

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Filed Under: africa, aripo, farmers, plants, trade agreements, treaty

Monsanto And Syngenta About To Receive Dozens Of Patents On Unpatentable Plants

from the literally-above-the-law dept

Last month we wrote about the strange case of unpatentable plants becoming patentable in Europe thanks to a decision from the European Patent Office’s Enlarged Board of Appeal. That cleared the way for companies to obtain such patents, and according to this post on the “no patents on seeds” site — I think you can probably work out where its biases lie — that’s about to happen:

> the European Patent Office (EPO) is about to grant 30 patents on plants derived from conventional breeding to Monsanto and its affiliated companies. The Swiss company Syngenta can expect to receive around a dozen patents very soon. Many of the patents claim vegetables such as tomatoes, peppers, cauliflower, carrots and lettuce.

Leaving aside the important question of whether it should be possible to obtain patents on plants, there are some other issues. For example, Monsanto is currently trying to acquire Syngenta. Although its initial offer of $45 billion was turned down, the view seems to be that Monsanto will go higher because it needs Syngenta’s broad portfolio of products to address the growing concerns over glyphosate, which lies at the heart of much of its range. According to a recent report, Monsanto is willing to divest itself of all of Syngenta’s “seeds and genetic traits businesses as well as some overlapping chemistry assets to win regulatory approval”, but it’s not clear whether that would include patents on plants. If it didn’t, all of the imminent plant patents mentioned above might end up with Monsanto, which would represent a dangerous concentration of power in this important new area.

The more serious problem concerns the EPO. The decision to extend patentability to plants was taken by the EPO’s Enlarged Board of Appeal, which should raise conflict of interest concerns, since the EPO is funded by patent fees. That wouldn’t be a serious problem if there were a higher court to which appeals could be made. But as the EPO told Intellectual Property Watch:

> Decisions made by the Enlarged Board of Appeal cannot be challenged before another judiciary.

One body that does have the power to revise EPO decisions is the Administrative Council of the EPO, but it is made up largely of senior patent officials from the 40 or so member states of the EPO, and so it is naturally pro-patent and thus unlikely to interfere with extensions to patentability. In fact, there is no democratically-elected body at all that could force the EPO to change its policy on anything. Worse, the EPO is literally above national laws, since its offices enjoy diplomatic immunity of the kind given to embassies. As Wikipedia explains it:

> The premises of the European Patent Office enjoy a form of extraterritoriality. In accordance with the Protocol on Privileges and Immunities, which forms an integral part of the European Patent Convention under Article 164(1) EPC, the premises of the European Patent Organisation, and therefore those of the European Patent Office, are inviolable. The authorities of the States in which the Organisation has its premises are not authorized to enter those premises, except with the consent of the President of the European Patent Office.

While that’s the case — and there’s very little prospect of it changing in the short-term — extensions of patentability to non-patentable matter are not just likely to happen, but will be well-nigh impossible to reverse.

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Filed Under: eu, patents, plants
Companies: monsanto, syngenta

Africa's Ancient Plant Diversity And Seed Independence Still Under Threat From Proposed New Laws

from the with-a-little-help-from-their-friends dept

Back in May 2013, we wrote about worrying attempts to create a harmonized system for controlling the sale of seeds in Africa that would increase the power of large suppliers such as Monsanto, at the expense of small farmers. A long and interesting article in Intellectual Property Watch indicates that those efforts are intensifying:

> The African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO), with the help of the United States and an international plant variety organisation, is working to grow regional support for a controversial draft law. The draft protocol would boost protection for new plant varieties, despite concerns of local civil society that it would not be in the best interest of ARIPO members’ food security due to its potential impact on small farmers. ARIPO held a regional workshop on the issue in recent weeks in part to build support for a treaty negotiation to lock in these protections.

There appears to have been an attempt to censor criticism at that workshop:

> The event restricted the attendance of civil society, according to the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA). At the event, the group confirmed its fears about the impact of the adoption of the protocol on small farmers and food security. ARIPO, meanwhile, said it had not heard particular worries from farmers over time.

On its website, the AFSA explains its fears:

> These national laws will enable the entry of foreign breeders and threaten the rights of small-scale farmers.

It also outlines plans to counter this move:

> AFSA’s goal over the next three years in this area will be: to build the capacity of AFSA members to influence regional and national seed legislation and policies towards protection of farmers? rights in seed sovereignty. This will happen through and with the seed network that already exists. AFSA will help grow this into a continent-wide platform over the next three years.

That’s a laudable goal, but the worry has to be that many new plant variety protection laws will have been passed by then — doubtless with a little more help from the US on behalf of its Big Ag companies.

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Filed Under: africa, biodiversity, diversity, intellectual property, plant diversity, plants, seeds

Guatemala Resists 'Monsanto Law' Required As Part Of Trade Agreement With US

from the saving-seed-sovereignty dept

One of the less well-known projects of the West is to convince developing countries that they need to convert traditional approaches to agriculture, which have functioned well for hundreds of years, into a system of intellectual monopolies for seeds — the implicit and patronizing message being that this is the “modern” way to do things. Last year we wrote about how this was happening in Africa, and an article on bilaterals.org reports on similar moves in Guatemala:

> On 10 June, the Congress of Guatemala approved Decree 19-2014 or the “Law for the Protection of New Plant Varieties” which led to an outpouring of criticism from various sectors of civil society. > > This law, published on 26 June, protects the intellectual property of plant breeders deemed to have “created” or “discovered” new plant varieties, or genetically modified existing ones. > > This way, the beneficiaries of the law — “breeders”, which are typically companies producing transgenic seeds like the transnational corporation Monsanto — obtain property rights over the use of such varieties, in the form of plants or seeds.

Here’s how that is likely to impact Guatemalan farmers:

> In a publication, the Rural Studies Collective (Cer-Ixim) warned about the consequences of this “Monsanto Law”. > > They explained that under this law the possession or exchange of seeds of protected varieties without the breeder’s authorisation will be illegal and punishable by imprisonment. > > It will also be illegal, and punishable by prison, to posses the harvest from such seeds or to save them for future plantings. > > According to the law, the breeder’s right extends to “varieties essentially derived from the protected variety.” In this sense, a hybrid produced from a protected variety crossed with an unprotected variety would automatically belong to the breeder of the patented variety. > > The law thus promotes privatisation and monopolies over seeds, endangering food sovereignty, especially that of indigenous peoples, said Cer-Ixim. It also warned that Guatemala’s biodiversity will fall “under the control of domestic and foreign companies.”

The new law was brought in as part of the process of complying with the 2005 CAFTA-DR free trade agreement between Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and the US. Under its terms, signatories are obliged to sign up to the International Convention for the Protection of New Plant Varieties — exactly the same one that was being foisted on Africa last year. However, as bilaterals.org reports, despite that obligation, there is mounting resistance to handing over the country’s seed sovereignty in this way:

> The growing opposition to the “Monsanto Law” comes from diverse sectors of civil society such as indigenous organisations, environmental groups, scientists, artists and members of Congress. > > … > > Artists and television celebrities have joined an online signature campaign to reject the law. > > Their petition is addressed to the President, Otto Perez Molina, via the Avaaz website, and argues that the law is unconstitutional. > > “This law violates articles of the Constitution relating to the Protection of Individuals, Cultural Identity, Natural Heritage, Right to Health, the principles of the Economic and Social Regime, in addition to the obligation of the state to protect consumers,” the petition states.

Just recently, the Constitutional Court, Guatemala’s highest legal body, provisionally suspended the entry into force of the law, giving 15 days for the various parties to to present their arguments. Despite the broad-based support for repealing or modifying the law, it is not clear what options the government has. After all, passing the law is a requirement of CAFTA-DR, and if Guatemala refuses to comply, we can expect the US to apply considerable pressure to encourage it to toe the line. Ultimately, the US can refuse to bring into force the agreement; given the presence of corporate sovereignty (pdf) and other onerous provisions in CAFTA-DR, maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing for the people of Guatemala.

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Filed Under: agriculture, cafta, guatemala, intellectual property, monopolies, monsanto law, plants, seeds, trade agreements
Companies: monsanto

DailyDirt: Shhh! The Plants Are Listening!

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

People usually think of plants as deaf and dumb, but plants might be a bit smarter that we think. Sure, there have been science fair projects where plants grow and respond to music. But much more elaborate research has shown various plants can “hear” certain kinds of vibrations and react measurably. Here are just a few examples of plants listening to their environment.

• Researchers at the University of Missouri have detected plants creating more defensive chemicals when exposed to the sounds of caterpillars chewing. The scientists measured the tiny vibrations using laser reflections off leaves and noted that playing back other vibrations didn’t result in the plants synthesizing more defensive mustard oils. [url]
• Do plants really grow better in response to music? Mythbusters says it’s plausible, and a few other studies seem to support this idea. [url]
• Apparently, chili seedlings can detect who their neighbors are — and distinguish between “bad” neighbors such as fennel and “good” neighbors like basil. One proposal is that these plants can “hear” acoustic vibrations from adjacent plants… but that’s crazy, right? [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: biology, music, mythbusters, plants, senses, stimuli, vibrations

DailyDirt: Rediscovering Heirloom Plants

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

It turns out that many Americans aren’t paying much attention to the ongoing battle over labeling genetically modified foods. A recent survey by researchers at Rutgers University found that half of Americans know very little or nothing at all about GM foods, while a quarter have never even heard of them. Furthermore, they found that many Americans are also confused about what types of GM foods are on the market. Meanwhile, heirloom fruits, vegetables, and grains are gaining popularity. These are plants that have been grown and passed down from one generation to another — some for more than 100 years — often selected for their superior flavor, as well as other characteristics such as productivity, hardiness, and adaptability. If you want to avoid GM foods, why not spend some time rediscovering heirloom varieties? Here are a few links to get you started.

• Glass Gem corn is a stunning variety of heirloom corn that’s named for its multi-colored, gem-like kernels. You really have to see it to believe it. Glass Gem is the result of many years of selective breeding of corn that exhibited vivid, translucent colors.[url]
• Tartine Bakery in San Francisco has started incorporating heirloom and ancient varieties of grains into the bread they make. Apparently, these older varieties of grains — rye, barley, einkorn, and emmer — have a different gluten quality that makes them easier to digest. [url]
• In case of an apocalyptic disaster that destroys the world’s crops, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault will make sure we can rebuild the global plant population. Built on the edge of the Arctic Ocean in Svalbard, Norway — away from civilization — the seed vault can hold up to 4.5 million different seed varieties and keep them safe from disasters caused by climate change, asteroid strikes, plant diseases, nuclear warfare, and even earthquakes. [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: biotech, bread, food, genetically modified foods, glass gem corn, gmo, grain, heirloom corn, heirloom varieties, plants, seeds, svalbard global seed vault