Open-Source Seed Initiative Plants Resistance to Patented Crops

For Earth Day, gardeners can help ensure vegetable, fruit and grain seeds remain available to everyone by ordering a set of open-source seeds from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Gardeners and farmers can save open-source seeds after harvest and pass the plants on for generations. Breeders can use the open-source crops to develop new varieties.

Most new crop varieties result from elaborate breeding programs or expensive genetic engineering techniques. Legal measures prohibit or limit farmers' and gardeners' abilities to save and replant those crops' seeds. Intellectual property rights and patents also block breeders from using those plants to create new varieties. Some sociologists, agronomists and food-security activists worry that patenting plants makes farmers dependent on corporations for their seeds and limits regional innovation. Read more...