Mainstream WeeklyThe 11th session of the governing body of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) held November 2025 in Lima, Peru attempted to handover all genetic resources of developing Southern nations to global seed agribusiness. Thanks to active resistance from united South this malicious attempt was temporarily thwarted.
Like water, air, soil and seeds are commons owned by community. Since the beginning of civilization and advent of farming, people have been sharing crop seeds among them with no price tag. Most of the crops beginning with rice, wheat, mung to coconut originated in tropical South and gradually spread to other regions of the planet. There are eight Vavilovian centres of crop origin stretching from Mexico to Medagacor to Africa to India. Tribal people and farmers safe keep (conserve) a vast diversity of plant seeds called Plant Genetic Resources or Germplasm. In villages women farmers traditionally safe keep the crop seeds for future generations. National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR, ICAR, Pusa, Delhi) today safe keeps nearly half a million PGRs in state of art modern gene banks. These are the primary source for plant breeders to develop high yielding superior crop varieties from green revolution to to date. In the recent 11 th summit of TPGRFA, International Treaty for Food and Agriculture held in Lima Peru (Nov. 24 -29,2 20205), global seed agribusiness MNCs attempted to take full control of the vast tropical seed wealth from global south. However, the malicious attempt that potentially undermines India