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60 SEEDWORLD.COM OCTOBER 2015 resistance to biotic or abiotic stresses traits that enhance the nutritional or processing value of harvested commodities and any other traits used to describe a product for the purpose of promoting its commercialization. ISF believes that the benefit-sharing obligations linked to percent incorporation based on pedigree could be a graduated scale where the payment is greater for a higher percent incorporation on a sliding scale to no payment when percent incorpo- ration is less than 3.125 percent. Other elements of the discussion paper include royalty payments upfront pay- ments and termination clauses for a Standard Material Transfer Agreement. Van den Hurk hopes the ad hoc working group will come to some resolution as whatever comes from it will say a lot about the future outcome of the treaty. Its important that the seed business understand that there is a new concept of thinking internationally and that rules for access and benefit-sharing exist she says. The treaty approach for access and benefit-sharing is reasonable it might not be ideal but in principle it creates a level playing field for companies no matter the size of the company. Meeting of the Sixth Session Signatories of The Sixth Session of the Governing Body of the ITPGRFA met in early October to negotiate a subscription system to access diverse germplasm that is intended to generate predictable and regular income for farmers conserving and further adapting seed varieties on farm. During the meeting delegates also agreed to proceed with the proposal for a Global Information System GLIS. GLIS will contain a virtual gene library that will include data from seed banks research centers and farmers organizations says Shakeel Bhatti ITPGRFA secretary. Its going to take time to get it fully functional because of the vast array of interests involved but it will greatly facilitate the work of all the actors along the seed value chain in developing and developed countries. IRRIs Zeigler said We cant expect every program every gene bank in the world to redesign their databases to match some international standard. What we need is inter-operability to create por- tals where everyones databases can talk to another. That is what the GLIS is designed to be. IRRI made the first contribution to the new system by placing with it the genome sequences of more than 3000 rice varieties. According to the European Seed Association Europes breeders see this treaty with its multilateral system and standardized approach to Standard Material Transfer Agreements as the best available concept to successfully secure the conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources. It is ESAs position that access to genetic resources for further breeding is the key precondition to enable plant breeders to continuously and success- fully address the grand challenges of food security environmental sustainabil- ity and climate change said Garlich von Essen ESAs secretary general during his speech in Rome. However von Essen recognizes that the treaty is not perfect highlighting the lack of income flowing into its benefit- sharing fund. He added that ESA stands ready to further contribute its knowledge and experience to a successful conclusion of the ongoing negotiations regarding further improvement of the treaty and its financing. To show its commitment ESA made voluntary financial contributions to the treatys access and benefit-sharing fund in 2014 and 2015. During its recent annual meeting in Vienna Austria the association gifted 300000 euros to the treatys benefit-sharing fund. Across the pond to date the United States is not a signatory to the ITPGRFA however the American Seed Trade Association has been working for a number of years to get the treaty rati- fied by Congress. Monsantos Nickson explains the United States would not have to change any of its laws to be in compli- ance with the treaty and that its philo- sophically aligned with what the National Plant Germplasm System is trying to do when it comes conserving plant genetic resources. ASTA continues to push Congress on the issue but Nickson says with the upcoming presidential election it will be hard to get anything done. SW