Plant Variety Rights Amendment Bill to update NZ legislationTuesday, 18 Oct, 2005
Federated Farmers and the Grains Council in conjunction with the New Zealand Plant Breeding and Research Association (NZPBRA), recently submitted to the draft Plant Variety Rights (PVR) Act Amendment Bill. The overriding purpose of the Bill is to strengthen the rights of plant breeders to encourage more plant varieties to be registered in New Zealand, but the amendment adds or enhances a number of other provisions to the benefit of growers and farmers.
The draft Bill proposes to amend the PVR Act so that the mere discovery of a variety is not enough to justify the grant of a PVR. It requires that there must be a degree of human input before a PVR can be justified. It also gives breeders control of "essentially derived" varieties, which are varieties that have been predominantly bred from an existing variety. This change, which was recommended by the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification, will protect the property in existing varieties while allowing new varieties to be developed from them. The Bill also provides that the name given to a new variety should not offend any significant sector of the public.
Importantly for growers, the PVR Amendment Bill protects the right of a farmer to save his/her own seed for replanting. At the same time a new section provides that farmer/industry agreed varieties may be excluded from the farmer saved seed right. The Federation hopes that this will allow breeders to better manage some niche varieties, while still allowing farmers to supply processors with grain grown from farmer saved seed.
The advantage to farmers purchasing seed is that this review will bring New Zealand plant variety rights into conformity with the international plant variety rights law. This should encourage increased investment into breeding new varieties, or introducing overseas varieties into New Zealand.
Read Federated Farmers submission at the link below:  FFNZ_Submission _PVR_Amendment_Oct05
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