Plant breeding, biodiversity loss and intellectual property rights

There is a general perception that modern agroecosystems have a negative biodiversity impact. The adverse implications are a reflection of modern varieties being bred from a narrow circle of parental genetic material and of the high level of genetic uniformity of the varieties. Existing literature suggests that the adoption of low-diversity agroecosystems is favoured because of possibilities of exploiting scale economies from the use of standard tools and knowledge. This trajectory of development is subsequently globalised because of path dependency and lock-in effects. The paper sheds a novel insight on this issue by historically examining the breeding of genetically uniform varieties. Institutional factors, like intellectual property rights, that reinforce the bias towards genetic uniformity are also examined. The paper concludes that the system of intellectual property rights were developed in a specific manner to provide juridical legitimisation to the breeding of genetically uniform varieties.