ABSTRACT
Until the end of the last century, crop genetic resources were managed as public domain goods according to a set of practices loosely labelled as ‘common heritage’. The rise of intellectual property for plants, the commercialization of seed, increasing use of genetic resources in crop breeding, and declining availability of crop genetic resources have contributed to extensive revisions to the common heritage regime. Changes include specifying national ownership of genetic resources and the use of bioprospecting contracts in the movement of those resources between countries. The question addressed here is whether protection of traditional agricultural knowledge related to crop genetic resources is best accomplished through a form of bioprospecting that replaces common pool management by private ownership.
