Statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture indicate that the number of applications for protecting new varieties of agricultural plants is increasing at an average annual rate of over 40 percent. By the end of the first quarter of this year, the Ministry has received 4049 applications aggregately for the past 10 years, ranking top four among members of the International Union for Protection of New Plant Varieties since 2004.
Mr. Zhang Fengtong, head of Office for Protection of New Plant Varieties and director-general of Science and Technology Education Department under the Ministry of Agriculture released the above-mentioned statistics during the 3rd session of National Registered Agricultural Varieties Exhibition and Trade Fair held in Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province on May 10, 2007.
According to Zhang, by the end of March this year, 150 applications from abroad were filed in China for protection of new varieties of flowers, vegetables and fruit-trees, promoting the import of good and new varieties from overseas and the export of agricultural products from China. Besides, the total number of the approved varieties of China's rice, corn, wheat, soybean, rape and cotton increased by 96.63 percent, an annual average increase of 13.33 percent, compared with the figure before the implementation of the Protection Regulations. There emerged a batch of new varieties of plants and their combinations with independent intellectual property right such as Yang Rice No.6. The statistics of 500 registered and applied varieties indicate the popularized land of 640 million mus, achieving social benefit of RMB 22.37 billion.
It is learned that one of the special features of this session is the participation of the foreign variety right owners in the fair for the first time, including those from Japan and Korea who are granted Certificate for Variety Rights.
