Public Funding of Agricultural Research: Cultivar Development
In the last two decades, soybean cultivar development has passed from the domain of public breeders to the domain of private seed companies. In an article titled “Cultivar Development in the US Public Sector” authored by Shelton and Tracy [Crop Sci. 57:1823-1835, 2017], the authors report results from a 2015 online survey of plant breeders working at public institutions in the US to determine the current status of cultivar development in the public sector, as well as how public breeders are impacted by varying institutional intellectual property [IP**] protection requirements. The survey targeted plant breeders who are actively releasing finished cultivars.
Major points and findings presented in the article follow.
• The mailing list consisted of 380 potential respondents, with 229 surveys returned for a response rate of 60.3%. Conclusions from the survey are drawn from the 192 respondents who released finished cultivars and inbred lines. Responses were received from 41 states and Puerto Rico. 18.7% of the respondents were from the Southeast + Delta States. 53.4% of the respondents work with field crops.
• 83.7% of the respondents work at land grant universities [LGU] or state agricultural experiment stations [SAES], and the remaining 16.3% are employed by USDA-ARS. The majority of the respondents [55%] have worked as a plant breeder in the public sector for 21 or more years.
• Survey topics included demographic and background information, germplasm usage and exchange, IP rights, breeding program funding, and institutional support and program size.
• The number of cultivars released was significantly affected by years a respondent had worked as a plant breeder, and by annual operating budgets and crop biology.
• 49.4% of respondents indicated that germplasm from other public breeding programs was their most used source for breeding material, while 24.7% reported that genetic material from the USDA Germplasm Resources Information Network [GRIN] was their most used source. Few respondents reported using private industry as a germplasm source.
• A large majority [94.8%] of the respondents share their germplasm with other breeders.
• 61% nearly always share their germplasm with an accompanying Material Transfer Agreement [MTA***]. 67.7% of the respondents indicated that their freedom to operate was somewhat or strongly restricted by MTA language.
• Field crop MTA’s were the most likely to restrict the use of germplasm for both gene transfer and as a recurrent parent.
• 71.7% of the respondents indicated their cultivars were protected by IP at least most of the time. Breeders of field crops are most likely to protect their developed cultivars with Plant Variety Protection certificates.
• 55.7% of respondents indicated that the IP currently used by public cultivar developers somewhat or strongly limits their freedom to operate.
• 54.1% of surveyed public plant breeders felt their programs were under-funded. Interestingly, an average of 17.8% of public plant breeder funding comes from commodity check-off programs, which is not much lower than the 24.1% of funding that comes from the public breeder’s employer.
• More than half of the respondents were either unsure or doubted that their institutions will hire another breeder to continue their cultivar development work when they leave or retire.
The overall results from this survey indicate that public cultivar development is declining. Although public plant breeding programs historically have had a high return on investment, the funding for these programs is in an overall pattern of decline.
With more than half of the respondents having been employed in their positions for 21 years or more, there are not enough younger breeders working in the public sector to maintain the current level of cultivar development as these senior breeders retire.
As funding has decreased, there has been an increase in IP protections imposed by public universities for varieties and genetic material developed by their breeders. Although this has provided a revenue stream for these institutions, the overall effect has been increased limitations on the use of this breeding material in research projects and breeding programs at other institutions. Also, an average of only 26.1% of royalty monies generated by IP’s is returned to the plant breeder’s program, and this further exacerbates funding shortfalls.
Public plant breeders working on crops that are also a major thrust of the private companies find it very challenging to exchange germplasm with those companies, especially with company-developed GM varieties. In many cases, and especially with soybean, germplasm sharing with the private companies is essentially nonexistent. This severely restricts public breeders’ ability to develop and release cultivars that will benefit producers and that will provide valuable non-GM traits in subsequently released GM cultivars.
These results should provide the impetus for USDA-ARS and LGU administrators to come together and compose a uniform IP and MTA process that will allow public breeders to freely and easily exchange breeding material among themselves so that all available enhanced genetic traits can be used to develop the best varieties for US producers.
A final note. Since public plant breeders are solely responsible for the education and training of the next generation of plant breeders in both the public and private sectors, a decline in their numbers will result in fewer new plant breeders that will be available to conduct the valuable plant breeding work that will result in improved crop cultivars. Private companies should be especially mindful of this fact since they depend on new breeders that will be trained by the public breeding programs.
*The terms “cultivar” and “variety” are synonymous as applied to cultivated plants. However, cultivar most commonly refers to cultivated plants that have been selected for desirable traits and characteristics. A cultivar is a cultivated variety that was created through breeding and is maintained through cultivation.
**Intellectual Property [IP] Rights are the rights given to persons or groups to protect the creations of their minds or endeavors. They are usually given as an exclusive right to the creation for a certain period of time. The purpose is to provide protection to the creator for investment(s) in the development of resulting new technology.
***Material Transfer Agreement [MTA] is a contract that governs the transfer of research materials between two organizations when the recipient intends to use said materials for their own research purposes. The MTA defines the rights of both the provider and recipient regarding the use of the transferred materials and any products resulting from their use.
Composed by Larry G. Heatherly, Oct. 2017, larryheatherly@bellsouth.net