Virginia Quarterly Review, in an article titled “Linux for Lettuce,” delves into the arguments over open-source seeds available to anyone and the practice of some seed companies to patent their products. The story opens with cases of plant breeders who independently developed plant varieties or shared their results with others but later learned a company had patented the trait they had developed.
“If all of this seems like the concern of a specialized few, consider that plant breeders shape nearly every food we eat,” says the article. “In the long term, it could hinder the very resilience of agriculture itself.”
The Open Source Seed Initiative released on April 17 its first set of seeds intended to be freely shared and used.