Plant variety protection and secured financing in Nigeria: lessons from international standards

... On 22 May 2021, the World News Media widely reported on the passing, at the age of 91, of Professor Yuan Longping, a Chinese agronomist nicknamed the ‘Father of Hybrid Rice’ and reputed for reportedly saving the teeming Chinese population with his genetically modified hybrid species of high-yield, fast-growing, disease-resistant rice discovered in 1974.1 His species of rice was to become predominant in the USA, Africa and Asia, thereby saving practically the entire world from malnutrition, hunger and starvation.2 Encomiums and fond remembrance continued to trail the demise of this world-famous and important scientist.3 In the 1970s, Yuan’s hybrid strain of rice recorded an annual yield 20 per cent higher than existing variety which, in practical terms, meant that it could feed an extra 70 million people in China that year.4 In 2017, in conjunction with an agricultural school, he helped create a strain of low-cadmium Indica rice for areas suffering from heavy metal pollution, reducing the amount of cadmium in rice by more than 90 per cent.5 These examples illustrate the importance of genetically modified plant variety in contemporary agriculture and explain why governments and non-governmental institutions should encourage and protect safe inventions in agriculture to incentivize creativity and end global hunger and malnutrition, especially in times of food shortage, famine and global food insecurity. Apart from the 2004 World Food Prize, Yuan’s honours and awards also included the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Medal of Honor for Food Security and the 2004 Wolf Prize in Agriculture, and he was also appointed as chief consultant to the United Nations FAO programme to increase grain production outside China which made the hybrid rice its first choice.6