Plant Patents - Michigan 7 2024 BFHR

AFF + NEG - Plant Patents - BFHR
Notes!
what does the plan do?
the kock ev is by far the best solvency advocate for it in this file. it essentially says that there’s ambiguity over PBRs (plant breeder’s rights) and IPR (intellectual property rights) for plants right now – theyre separated systems for God knows what reason – the plan consolidates them into one CLEARER patent system! right now it’s difficult for patents to be granted over plants due to things like the myriad decision or just general plant novelty requirements, the kock card says the plan reverses that by just clarifying
adv 1?
new breeding advantage – it’s just a big biotech good page! has a few impacts to biotech, says that new technologies that are created by breeding plants can’t get patented now but they do post plan which helps industries advance new tech that solves for things like food, bioD conservation, and global warming
adv 2?
patents advantage – i wish i had more time to find more angles for this adv, but right now it’s supposed to be just like a big answer to patents bad. it’s very similar to just a big biotech adv, but it’s slightly different because both impacts are predicated off of the actual innovation that happens and the act of innovating itself, rather than what those innovations do. that increases cooperation with other countries over biotech, which is needed to solve a slew of existential risks. i think there’s definitely a perception warrant buried somewhere in here, that collabing with other countries only needs to be perceived through increased biotech inn. b/c that solves great power conflicts, but i think you need to leverage the adv 1 tech stuff for accessing the big natural disaster impacts like climate.
solvency?
okay so the big thing was explained above – it kinda just consolidates plant breeder’s rights into one system. the kock ev says that this one action is sufficient to answer a number of questions in PBR in the squo:
• How to determine an “essential derived variety” and dependency under the PBR system if the technical progress renders the criteria of genetic similarity useless? • How to describe a variety if the phenotype and the related DUS criteria are increasingly volatile as a consequence of climate change and other environmental factors? • What are clear and meaningful criteria to describe native traits in patent applications? • How to increase quality and speed of patent examination for plant related inventions? • How to enable a market and competition for post-patent use of GM traits including access to regulatory data packages? • How to balance the interests of farmers, breeders, and technology holders when it comes to farm-saved-seed of varieties protected by both patents and PBRs? • What is an adequate scope of method claims related to general enabling methods? • How can we foster the sustainable use of plant GRs and ensure an equitable benefit sharing? • What measures can smoothen the interface between patents, PBRs, GRs, and other legislations?
you don’t need to know all of them – you just need to know that answering these questions makes patenting plants more accessible to breeders.
why????
it’s honestly just a ton more biotech/patents good stuff, maybe with somewhat of a smaller scope so you can maybe spike out of links to das like politics or patent pathogens. i just like cutting cards bro. i think there’s a lot of lit that this is just a good idea, and it functions as a great impact turn to all of the patents bad stuff that was put out – patent thickets, trolls, being worse for innovation, etc, all have built in answers by the aff. i also just like talking about the environment, so if you do too this is a good option to read
LOVE,
kailey KCAB!!!
AFF
1AC---Plant Patents
1AC---ADV---NBTs
NEW BREEDING ADVANTAGE.
New breeding technologies, or NBTs, are creating a patent eligibility mess---further clarification is required to incentivize innovation.
Michael Kock 21, Dr. Michael Kock is a wildlife veterinarian and UC Davis MPVM alumnus who has been at the forefront of wildlife conservation and management, his name is very funny, June 2021, Agronomy, Volume 11 Issue 6, “Open Intellectual Property Models for Plant Innovations in the Context of New Breeding Technologies”, kcab
Abstract
Plant related innovations are critical to enable of food security and mitigate climate change. New breeding technologies (NBTs) based on emerging genome editing technologies like CRISPR/Cas will facilitate “breeding-by-editing” and enable complex breeding targets—like climate resilience or water use efficiency—in shorter time and at lower costs. However, NBTs will also lead to an unprecedented patent complexity. This paper discusses implications and potential solutions for open innovation models.
Keywords: new breeding technology; CRISPR/Cas; patent thickets; open innovation
1. Introduction
Agriculture is a critical enabler of food security and global wellbeing but in its current form also a major contributor to climate change [1,2,3]. The negative effect will likely increase due to population growth and dietary changes. [4] However, to classify agriculture as a “necessary evil” would be simplistic, as allowing agriculture to remain a major carbon emitter is not sustainable as climate change will eventually destroy agriculture. More than 90% of the Earth’s soils could be degraded by 2050 if we continue on the current path [5]. On the other hand, agriculture also has the potential to be a carbon sink, i.e., a solution for climate change rather than a cause.
One enabler of this change is to maximize agricultural innovation and its use. A substantial improvement of crop production with a reduction of inputs and use of natural resources use cannot be expected from the current GM technology which focuses primarily on herbicide tolerance and insect resistance and is not adapted to manage complex traits such as yield and resource efficiency. While there is reason for skepticism in view of the past promises related to GM crops, new breeding technologies (NBTs) are more than a “GMO 2.0”. By facilitating “breeding-by-editing” they enable complex breeding targets—like climate resilience or water use efficiency—in shorter time and at lower costs. NBTs can also “democratize” plant biotechnology and re-invigorate competition in a field where recently only a handful multinational companies were able to act.
Intellectual property (IP) can play an important role as an incentive to create innovation but could also be an obstacle to maximize innovation use. This paper discusses the impact of NBTs on the IP landscape, shows that NBTs will likely increase patent complexity, and analyses whether current solutions could evolve the patent system into an open innovation framework.
Plant breeding is overwhelmingly the number one response to food insecurity. The future of agricultural is all dependent on disease resistance, resilience, and quality of plants.
Aqsa Hafeez et al 23, Aqsa Hafeez, Baber Ali, Muhammad Ammar Javed, Aroona Saleem, Mahreen Fatima, Amin Fathi, Muhammad Siddique Afridi, Veysel Aydin, Mükerrem Atalay Oral & Fathia A. Soudy , bachelor's and master's in Plant Sciences from Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan, Planta, 1/10/12/23, “Plant breeding for harmony between sustainable agriculture, the environment, and global food security: an era of genomics‐assisted breeding”, kcab
Main conclusion
Genomics-assisted breeding represents a crucial frontier in enhancing the balance between sustainable agriculture, environmental preservation, and global food security. Its precision and efficiency hold the promise of developing resilient crops, reducing resource utilization, and safeguarding biodiversity, ultimately fostering a more sustainable and secure food production system.
Abstract
Agriculture has been seriously threatened over the last 40 years by climate changes that menace global nutrition and food security. Changes in environmental factors like drought, salt concentration, heavy rainfalls, and extremely low or high temperatures can have a detrimental effects on plant development, growth, and yield. Extreme poverty and increasing food demand necessitate the need to break the existing production barriers in several crops. The first decade of twenty-first century marks the rapid development in the discovery of new plant breeding technologies. In contrast, in the second decade, the focus turned to extracting information from massive genomic frameworks, speculating gene-to-phenotype associations, and producing resilient crops. In this review, we will encompass the causes, effects of abiotic stresses and how they can be addressed using plant breeding technologies. Both conventional and modern breeding technologies will be highlighted. Moreover, the challenges like the commercialization of biotechnological products faced by proponents and developers will also be accentuated. The crux of this review is to mention the available breeding technologies that can deliver crops with high nutrition and climate resilience for sustainable agriculture.
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Abiotic stress and its significance in agriculture
Abiotic stressors are a major impediment to crop production and have both qualitative and quantitative detrimental effects (Bashir et al. 2019; He et al. 2018). The majority of croplands are exposed to such unfavorable conditions (Cramer et al. 2011). Ahmad and Prasad (2011) stated that abiotic stressors, such as drought, heat, salinity, and cold, are common worldwide and affect up to 70% of the survival biomass and yield of most major food crops (Wang et al. 2003; Wani et al. 2016). Climate change and an increasing human population are expected to exacerbate negative impacts of abiotic stresses on agriculture and the ecosystem (Kopecká et al. 2023). Currently, the world population has passed the 8 billion mark, and the projections are for an increase to about 8.5 billion by 2030 and 9.7 billion by 2050 (Afridi et al. 2022). Therefore, environmental changes pose a major challenge to the agricultural sector's efforts to meet rising global food demand (Kopecká et al. 2023). In addition, the presence of multiple or altered abiotic and biotic stressors can trigger a trade-off between plant responses that are suitable for adaptation to one stress but may increase vulnerability to other stressors. This dilemma, involving global increases in yield demands and increasing threats to yields due to environmental conditions, requires significant investment in research and development focused on improving crop stress resistance (Dresselhaus and Hückelhoven 2018). Traditional breeding techniques have significantly increased crop production and yields, but new methods and techniques are needed to meet the growing demand for food (Anwar and Kim 2020; Mishra et al. 2017). As noted by Mishra et al. and Anwar et al., several approaches have been developed to improve the resilience of plants so that they can better survive and produce more efficiently. When plants are exposed to environmental stressors, overproduction of reactive oxygen species (ROS) occurs, negatively affecting enzyme activity, carbohydrate biosynthesis, DNA and protein synthesis, and other biochemical processes, leading to oxidative stress (Pandey et al. 2017; Zhu 2016). As a result of ROS, many genes associated with growth, cell cycle, programmed death, abiotic stress response, systemic signal transduction, pathogen response, and development are also impacted (Gill and Tuteja 2010). Plant breeding techniques that enhance resistance to a variety of abiotic stresses are imperative in order to meet the increasing demand for food and counteract the deleterious effects of abiotic stress on crop production (Ghadirnezhad Shiade et al. 2023; Noman et al. 2017; Talaat and Shawky 2016). In order to increase the production of stress-tolerant crops and facilitate drought management through identification of different parental combinations and improvement of selection efficiency, it is imperative to integrate advanced genomic technologies and data-driven approaches into the breeding process (Yadav et al. 2018). Genes that control important adaptation traits can be identified using genetic approaches, such as quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping, marker-assisted breeding, and genomic selection. Breeders can select superior genotypes quickly and speed up the breeding cycle with them (Maphosa et al. 2020). In recent years, new tools have emerged that aim to identify genes associated with drought resistance in wild relatives and landraces of crops that can be transferred to breeding lines to facilitate the breeding process and produce drought-tolerant strains. These tools include three main categories, namely marker-assisted selection (MAS), genomic selection (GS), and targeted gene editing (CRISPR technology).
Causes of abiotic stress
Environmental factors, such as temperature, water availability, light, and soil properties, can lead to abiotic stress
In agriculture, stress is regarded as a deviation from normal physiological processes (Oshunsanya et al. 2019). The disruption from ideal plant functions could be caused either directly or indirectly by it (Hatfield and Prueger 2015). Physiology, growth, development, yield, and quality of crops are all affected by environmental stresses. In order to improve agricultural practices, it is extremely important to understand how environmental factors interact with physiological processes (Rao et al. 2016). Stress affects crops on a molecular to morphological level. The responses at the whole crop level take into account all the underlying processes. The quantitative assessment of these studies is therefore not always straightforward. Moreover, climate change will exacerbate this problem (Calanca 2017). As a result of abiotic stress, plant water relations could be disrupted, water usage efficiency reduced, photosynthetic capacity disrupted, gas exchange reduced, nutrients acquired altered, protein synthesis reduced, and organic solutes formed and accumulated (Talaat 2019). Anjum et al. described drought conditions as characterized by either limited water supply to the roots or high water loss through transpiration. Water stress can affect plants in a variety of ways such as decreasing photosynthesis and inhibiting growth, closing stomata, reducing transpiration rates, and reducing the water potential of plant tissues (Ghadirnezhad Shiade et al. 2023). In many parts of the world, soil salinity represents a significant factor limiting agricultural productivity (Zhu et al. 2016). It has been shown that high salt levels result in ion toxicity (mainly Na+), hyperosmotic stress, and secondary stresses such as oxidative damage (Zhu 2002). Physiological and metabolic processes in plant tissue are affected by salinity stress, but since most economic crop species are glycophytes, salinity inhibits crop productivity (Abobatta 2020). High temperature stress also results in morphological, biochemical, and physiological changes that affect plant growth and development (Wahid et al. 2007). As a result of high temperature stress, proteins may be damaged, their synthesis disturbed, major enzymes inactivated, and membranes ruptured (Fahad et al. 2017). For Earth's regions, the minimum temperature reaches zero degrees Celsius (Rihan et al. 2017). Many crops, such as rice, maize, tomato, soybean, corn, and cotton, do not acclimate to cold temperatures and require tropical or subtropical climates to thrive (Chinnusamy et al. 2007). Plant growth and development are adversely affected by cold stress, which also limits the geographical distribution of plant species and lowers crop yields worldwide (Ding et al. 2019; Pearce 2001). For plant growth and development, light is one of the most important environmental factors. Aside from regulating plant growth and productivity, it determines photosynthetic rate and accumulate–assimilation. Nevertheless, plants are frequently exposed to excess or inadequate light intensities, which, collectively referred to as light stress, can affect their agronomic traits by inhibiting their physiological metabolic processes, such as photosynthesis, antioxidants, and nitrogen and carbon fixation (Yang et al. 2019). Biomass production is directly influenced by symbiotic relationships and soil microbial biodiversity between soil microorganisms, which contribute to physiological processes and plant nutrient uptake. It has been reported that abiotic stressors like drought, extreme salinity, and other abiotic stressors can affect plant carbon metabolism adversely or favorably, depending on the stress rate, the species of plant, and the type of plant tissue (Abdul Rahman et al. 2021). Soil properties, such as pH, carbon, nitrogen, and moisture content, are abiotic factors that influence bacterial communities (Gahan and Schmalenberger 2014; Kalayu 2019; Nadarajah 2019). It is thought, however, that fungal communities are more influenced by biotic factors, such as plant diversity (Wang et al. 2020a, b). The bacterial and fungal communities affect soil variables like pH, carbon, nitrogen, and moisture content in a similar way, but regional abiotic factors such as climate have a larger impact on bacterial community variation than fungal communities (Bahram et al. 2018; Wang et al. 2020a, b).
Impacts of abiotic stress
Physiological effects of abiotic stress on plants and crops
Plant metabolism is immensely involved in the defense responses, physiological regulation, and signaling under severe abiotic stresses which affect the transport, concentration, biosynthesis, and storage of primary and secondary metabolites. In plant tissues, phenolic levels are affected by the nutrient deficiency. Phenylpropanoids accumulate as result of phosphate and nitrogen deficiency (Fritz et al. 2006). Phenolic concentrations are also regulated by low levels of magnesium, sulfur, and potassium. Excess phenolic acid is released from roots under low iron levels (Chen et al. 2018). Bryant et al. suggested that an exchange occurs between the carbon to biomass production or production of defensive secondary elements. Dramatic accumulation of phenyl amides and polyamines has been evident in tobacco and bean under abiotic stress conditions suggesting their antioxidant roles (Gupta et al. 2016). Similarly, drought, nutrient deficiency, sugar, light intensity, and UV also stimulate the accumulation of anthocyanin (Winkel-Shirley 2001)
Increasing the temperature above the threshold levels of plants disrupts their cellular homeostasis, metabolism and eventually growth. Plants possess photosynthetic apparatus which responds to the cellular energy imbalance but is very sensitive to heat and serves as first site of disruption before cellular disruptions (Ashraf and Hafeez 2004). Plants respond to the changes in temperature by adjusting their optimum photosynthetic rate to some extent, but extreme ups and downs in temperature limit the photosynthetic function as well as metabolic activities. Photosynthetic components, i.e., thylakoid electron transport, carbon reduction cycle, transpiration rate, and stomatal conductance are all disrupted by chilling stress (Mathur et al. 2014). Several studies have been performed to study the effects of temperature on the photosynthetic rates of plants. For example, high temperature enhances the photosynthesis rate, quantum yield of PSII, electron transport, carboxylation rate, and mesophyll and stomatal conductance in Glycine max (G. Xu et al. 2016a, b), reduces stomatal conductance and CO2 assimilation in Pisum sativum (Abdulmajeed et al. 2017), decreases the photochemical quenching coefficient, actual photochemical efficiency, starch content, and net photosynthetic rate in Cucumis sativus (Ding et al. 2016), and reduces the photochemical activity of PSII and chlorophyll content in T. aestivum (X. Chen et al. 2017). Chilling temperatur

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