Seed patent fee, China has started

en years ago, I read a book about genetic engineering, which has an impressive saying: one of the great creations of genetic engineering technology is to collect patent fees from life. In agriculture, patent fees are collected through genetically modified seeds.

At that time, I felt that China was still far away from this day. Unexpectedly, this day also came.

Seed patent fee

At the end of last year, the Ministry of Agriculture issued safety certificates for two kinds of genetically modified corn and one kind of genetically modified soybean. One of the safety certificates was obtained by Dabei agricultural company, and dbn9936 insect resistant and herbicide resistant corn was approved. This kind of corn, commonly known as "double resistant" corn, can resist both insects and herbicides.

The other two varieties are the double resistance 12-5 maize of Hangzhou Ruifeng Biotechnology Co., Ltd. and Zhejiang University and the shzd32-01 soybean of Shanghai Jiaotong University, which are herbicide resistant.

Before long, China will be planting its own genetically modified corn and soybeans.

On February 20, the investor relationship record released by Dabei agricultural company showed that the company's transgenic technology in corn and soybean varieties has reached the international advanced level, and the company's transgenic charging mode will face the whole industry platform and collect technology use fees. "The charging of technology use fee will refer to the charging practice of foreign countries and the actual situation of China. The specific pricing needs to be discussed internally." To this end, Zhang Xin, a special commentator of the Research Institute of modern agricultural science and technology innovation of China Science and technology, told the Beijing news that technology use refers to the insect resistant technology that superimposes genetically modified products on existing seed products. Generally speaking, the cost includes patent fee and annual use fee.

One word summary: that is to say, when farmers buy seeds, they need to charge patent fees, which is equivalent to integrating with the international genetically modified technology. The capital market has always been sensitive to smell. When Dabei Nong got the GM safety certificate, the stock price rose seven times in a row and the market value doubled.

How to understand patent fee?

In recent years, the rapid development of biotechnology and genetic engineering is transforming the face of nature. From plants and animals to bacteria and viruses, these are all included in the application of gene technology. One of the key points of transformation is transgenic crops.

A gene makes an industry. Because genes cannot be protected by "technical secrets", that is to protect them by patents. Therefore, patent protection is an important part of transgenic crops. Taking transgenic crops as an example, the largest scale of planting in the world is insect resistant and herbicide resistant transgenic crops. Monsanto and DuPont pioneer multinational companies in the United States take advantage of their technological advantages, hold core technology patents, and control 70% of the international seed market. One of the most important points is that transgenic crops contain a large number of patents,

The technical means used in the development of genetically modified seeds have been patented in key links. Later, the followers could not bypass these patents, as long as they were involved, they had to pay a huge patent fee. Through this means of patent protection, patent fees can be charged continuously. Because most of the genetically modified seeds can only be planted for one season and can't be kept by themselves, the growers need to buy seeds every year. The international seed industry giant is to realize the monopoly of breeding through the transformation of genetically modified seeds. The monopoly of breeding has brought huge profits and returns to the seed industry giants. As long as we engage in genetically modified food crops, we have to continuously pay patent fees to patent owners, and we need to collect patent fees for land planting, just like we have to pay taxes for food. For a country with a large population like China, if the seeds are controlled by people, they are equivalent to people being strangled. Therefore, genetically modified seeds have long been controversial in China.

At the end of 2009, the issuance of the safety certificate of genetically modified rice by the Ministry of agriculture caused widespread social controversy. In addition to the safety issue, the other focus of the controversy is that the genetically modified rice contains the patents of foreign companies. If the genetically modified rice is planted commercially, these international giant seed companies will collect patent fees through patent protection. Because of the fierce social controversy, transgenic rice has not been planted commercially.

Ten years later, genetically modified corn took the lead.

In 2019, China's corn fields were attacked by the meadow moth, which became an important reason for the industrialization of transgenic.

According to dabianong, the transgenic variety has a yield increase rate of about 10% - 20%, and has the characteristics of insect resistance. It has a very strong resistance to the moth. As early as 2012, dabianong began to develop transgenic varieties, and continued to develop new transgenic varieties.