The Union Minister of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Shri Radha Mohan Singh distributed the Genome Savior Award 2012-13 to awardees in a function organized by PPV&FR Authority in New Delhi today. The Minister of State for Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, Shri Parshottam Rupala and the Minister of State for Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, Shri Sudarshan Bhagat were present on the occasion.Speaking on the occasion, Shri Radha Mohan Singh said that PPV &FRA can also make efforts by initiating necessary action to commercialize the prominent farmers varieties registered with the Authority, which can play vital role in increasing of production and productivity. Our Government has recently during the month of May, 2016 announced National IPR policy to promote a holistic and conducive ecosystem to catalyse the full potential of Intellectual Property for India’s economic growth and socio cultural development in general and growth of seed market in particular while protecting public interest.
Shri Singh stressed that the PPV&FRA will be restructured, upgraded and modernized to implement the National IPR policy with regard to plant varieties. The Authority will make more efforts to improve IP creation, management, utilization of IP in plant varieties and also collaborate with ICAR Institutes, State Agricultural Universities (SAUs) and National Seeds Association of India (NSAI) etc.The Union Minister emphasized The Indian agricultural research system is one of the strongest in the world. The challenge before us is to develop new & improved varieties/hybrid suitable to various agro climatic regions and also to counter the biotic & abiotic stresses while improving productivity in a sustainable manner.