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Nunhems passes on royalties to benefit-sharing fund
Plant breeder shares profits with growers in developing countries
Nunhems has paid over 100,000 euros to the benefit-sharing funds of the International Treaty. This is 0.77% of the amount of turnover of ten vegetable varieties that have been developed using, among others, material from two gene banks, of which the Centre of Genetic Sources in the Netherlands (CGN) is one.
In 2010, Nunhems signed a Standard Material Transfer Agreement (SMTA) for the reception of materials from the CGN collection. The SMTA has been developed for the exchange of plant genetic resources that are part of the Multilateral Systems for Access and Distribution of Advantages of the International Treaty regarding Plant Genetic Resources. This system is developed in a way that the profits made from the use of genetic resources are divided amongst the farmers in developing countries via the Benefit-sharing Fund.
Gene bank
Like many gene banks, the CGN uses the SMTA for the exchange of all the materials in their collection.
Nunhems Netherlands recently paid $119,083, around 101 thousand euros, to the Benefit-sharing Fund. This is 0.77% of the amount of the profit of ten vegetable varieties that have been developed with the help of material from the collections of the CGN and the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK) in Germany. The varieties have been patented in the US.
"We hope that this will be the start of a harvest period and that we will be paying more use-based payments in the future, just like we expect other plant breeders to do,” says Peter Ogg, legal advisor at Nunhems Netherlands.
According to Theo van Hintum, head of CGN-Plant, the payments show how important gene bank accessions are to plant breeding. “Before, it was impossible to quantify the impact of our material, and it still is. But this first payment at least gives us some idea.” He adds: “And of course the most important thing is that this contribution to the Fund brings across a positive signal about the willingness of the seed industry to share the profits of their breeding activities. Not only through their products and input in kind to gene banks, but also in actual cash.
