Click here to view the round-table discussion between I.D. Termin, Barbara Reed, Fina T'Odinga, Marc Atere and Eugene O'Toole.

For those who do not have a fast enough connection or with whom the Flash-drive doesn’t work, read the conversation here Irrespective of the complexity or diversity of MTAs, research institutions will have to have an administrative system to track all materials and knowledge that is used in the course of its research. Biotechnologists tend to do this to a large extent in order to be able to write scientific papers – they commonly concentrate on the methodologies and not on the origin of the materials used. Plant breeders commonly keep track of the pedigrees in their breeding programmes, mainly to increase the efficiency of their work. The names of the landraces or parent varieties are commonly recorded, but not where the ideas came from to make particular crosses (local knowledge?).

Similar to the use of third party intellectual property, scientists need to know what the restrictions are on the use of each genetic resource used in their breeding programmes plus the source of the traditional knowledge that they included in their decision making processes.