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Open Source Seed Initiative
The Open Source Seed Initiative (OSSI) is an organization that developed and maintains a mechanism through which plant breeders can designate the new crop varieties they have bred as open source. This mechanism is advanced as an alternative to patent-protected seeds sold by large agriculture companies such as Monsanto or DuPont. OSSI is a U.S. based not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization focusing on establishing a protected commons of open source varieties and on educational and outreach activities associated with the development of this open source seed commons and on seed rights and issues related to the control of seed. The OSSI was founded in 2012 by a group of plant breeders, farmers, and seed companies. Founders include Jack Kloppenburg, Irwin Goldman, Claire Luby, Thomas Michaels, Frank Morton, Jonathan Spero, Alejandro Argumedo, and Jahi Chappell. Tom Stearns was an early supporter and advisor to the OSSI founders. Carol Deppe and C.R. Lawn joined the OSSI board of director ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plant Breeder
Plant breeding is the science of changing the traits of plants in order to produce desired characteristics. It has been used to improve the quality of nutrition in products for humans and animals. The goals of plant breeding are to produce crop varieties that boast unique and superior traits for a variety of applications. The most frequently addressed agricultural traits are those related to biotic and abiotic stress tolerance, grain or biomass yield, end-use quality characteristics such as taste or the concentrations of specific biological molecules (proteins, sugars, lipids, vitamins, fibers) and ease of processing (harvesting, milling, baking, malting, blending, etc.). Plant breeding can be performed through many different techniques ranging from simply selecting plants with desirable characteristics for propagation, to methods that make use of knowledge of genetics and chromosomes, to more complex molecular techniques. Genes in a plant are what determine what type of qualit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
