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Agricultural microbial resources: private property or global commons?

Nature Biotechnology volume 29, pages 1091–1093 (2011)Cite this article

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Agricultural microbes have become an attractive target for patenting, but the lack of a consistent global patent regime and increasingly heated debates over microbial ownership rights are barriers to the development of this resource.

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Figure 1: Distribution framework for crop and microbial resources.

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Acknowledgements

We thank D. Sharma for manuscript comments. D.K. received a research grant from the University of Delhi and E.T.K. is funded by a Vidi and a Meervoud grant from the Dutch Science Foundation (NWO).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Studies, David Kothamasi is in the Laboratory of Soil Biology and Microbial Ecology, University of Delhi, India.,

    David Kothamasi

  2. Matthew Spurlock is a JD candidate at Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.,

    Matthew Spurlock

  3. E. Toby Kiers is at the Department of Ecological Science, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.,

    E Toby Kiers

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  1. David Kothamasi
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  3. E Toby Kiers
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Correspondence to E Toby Kiers.

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Kothamasi, D., Spurlock, M. & Kiers, E. Agricultural microbial resources: private property or global commons?. Nat Biotechnol 29, 1091–1093 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.2056

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