It is the practice to deposit the biological materials in a depository institution to satisfy the patents law requirement of sufficiency of disclosure. Majority of the existing recognized depository institutions for the deposition of biological materials for patent procedure are situated in the developed countries. To assist the developing countries such desposition sufficient number of such institutions should be established in the developing countries.

Effects and concerns of the agreement on Indian agriculture There is no free export of food grains from India in order to help the government to maintain the buffer stock. To maintain this, the Indian government currently subsidizes the agriculture through minimum support prices and also by providing concessional charges for electricity, water, seeds, pesticides etc. This is being done solely to prevent the farmers from exporting the food grains to other countries. The subsidies are aimed at making the farm activities remunerative and profitable to the farmers considering that he is not getting higher price available in the international markets.

However, the above situation is likely to be changed in the near future consequent on agriculture coming under the WTO agreement. Under the new regime the agricultural products will also be eligible fore xports like other industrial products. Then the farmers will be interested to export the food grains they produce to claim higher prices, which are available in the international markets.

The immediate effect will be that the government will have to remove all restrictions on the exports of foodgrains that will be produced in India. In order to meet the demand of the international markets the Indian farmers too will be willing to utilize more lands for cultivation, indicating that the food grain production too will be driven by demand and not by supply.

A beginning has been made in this direction but not in areas of food grains but fruits, cut flowers and vegetables. This trend will increase in the coming years and there will be many linkages between the Indian farmers and various agencies in the industrialized world for increasing the exports of not only the above said items but also of food grains. Such a position is likely to shift the production from the requirement of the domestic market to the global market.

This will have certain implications in the current policies followed by the government. India has enormous amount of wasteland distributed across the length and breath of the country. These unutilized lands can be fruitfully utilized to cultivate food grains on the basis of demand in the international market. Technologies which are currently available to produce high quality seeds, which will not only increase the yield but also produce the products at a shorter periods of time can be utilized for this purpose.

In addition technologies to meet the future requirements should be developed. Thanks to the tools available in biotechnology, new varieties of plants such as wheat rice, etc. An international market survey should be undertaken to ascertain the needs of the various countries and base don which the technologies can be developed. For this purpose, proper planning has to be framed. It would be necessary to frame suitable strategies for (a) development of technologies meeting the standards (b) importing technologies, assimilate and adapt them to local conditions (c) setting up national regulatory authorities which will be responsible for ensuring the products conform to the accepted standards and (d) affiliating with international standard setting agencies.

(Excerpted from the author's Occasional Paper on `Patent Protection of the Result of the Research and Development' recently released by National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD). The author was a former controller of Patents and is currently advocate, consultant and patent attorney).