The Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights Act, 2001
8. General functions
of Authority.-
1. It
shall be the duty of the Authority to promote, by such measures as it thinks
fit, the encouragement for the development of new varieties of plants and to
protect the rights of the farmers and breeders.
2. In
particular, and without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing
provisions, the measures referred to in sub-section (1) may provide for-
a. the registration of
extant varieties subject to such terms and conditions and in the manner as may
be prescribed;
b. developing
characterisation and documentation of varieties registered under this Act;
c. documentation,
indexing and cataloguing of farmers' varieties;
d. compulsory
cataloguing facilities for all varieties of plants;
e. ensuring that seeds
of the varieties registered under this Act are available to the farmers and
providing for compulsory licensing of such varieties if the breeder of such
varieties or any other person entitled to produce such variety under this Act
goes not arrange for production and sale of seed in the manner as may be
prescribed;
f. collecting statistics
with regard to plant varieties, including the contribution of any person at any
time in the evolution or development of any plant variety, in India or in any
other country, for compilation and publication;
g. ensuring the
maintenance of the Register.