The so-called "green revolution" of the twentieth century was significantly dependent on the development and application of genetic theory to cultivar development. Relatively free of intellectual property considerations, knowledge and germplasm was widely available and extensively shared. Perhaps the successful hybridization efforts of Henry A. Wallace did in fact create the first truly privately held genetic resources, in that parental maize inbred lines were closely guarded industrial secrets that did not require legal protection for the exclusion of competitors. It became possible also to protect the ownership of particular cultivars with the Plant Variety Protection Act of 1970. Still, these protections were limited, and if one could produce a cultivar with one or more superior characteristics, and if there was even a small market for the improved cultivar, it could be introduced successfully into the market with no restrictions. With the introduction of molecular biology to applied plant breeding, there has been a fundamental change in that utility patents have bee sought--and granted--that claim not only ownership of an cultivar with an improved characteristic, but the methods used to produce that cultivar, the same improvement applied to many other crop species, and, furthermore, ownership of theoretical cultivars that might offer further improvement of the claimed characteristic.

The expense of laboratory-based genetic manipulations, and the increased scrutiny by regulatory agencies, demands the ability to recover development costs, and utility patents certainly offer a means to that end. The shift from public to private cultivar development may not be total, but ultimately biotechnology will fundamentally reshape agricultural research, at the expense of a system that has produced the greatest access to food in human history. How should we view this change, and deal with this change? What will be the role of public research institutions, and how can they access patented technologies and germplasm? How will the development of minor crops be accomplished, when the potential market is small and uninteresting to industry, and desirable technology and germplasm expensive to obtain? How can a researcher assure that a research project, though ultimately successful biologically, will succeed legally and commercially? Regardless of our attention to these and related questions, ultimately answers will be found, but a laissez-faire approach is not advisable. Our challenge is to critically examine these issues so that we may effectively continue our work, and perhaps also to influence the development of solutions that will best work for public and private research concerns, and for the public at large.