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The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is to consider a moratorium on patent applications for original varieties of seeds held on behalf of the international community by a network of international agriculture research centres.

The seeds are held in seedbanks run by the Consultative Group on International Agriculture Research (CGIAR), a network of research institutes mainly in the developing world but operated through the World Bank in Washington DC.

The call for the moratorium was made by CGIAR, and will be considered at a meeting in June of the FAO's commission on genetic resources. It comes in the wake of attempts by research institutes in Australia to file claims to intellectual property rights on seeds borrowed from CGIAR seedbanks in India and Syria.

The patent applications were discovered by the environmentalist group RAFI (Rural Advancement Foundation International), which alerted CGIAR and the FAO. The applications have since been withdrawn.

Pat Mooney, executive director of RAFI, welcomed the call for a moratorium. But plant breeders are sceptical. Bernard Le Buanec, secretary general of the International Plant Breeders' Association in Switzerland, questions the need for a moratorium on the grounds that international law already forbids the patenting of original varieties of germ plasm.

Geoffrey Hawtin, director general of the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute in Rome, says Le Buanec is “technically correct” but a moratorium will prevent patents being filed on original varieties of seed in countries where this is not illegal.