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‘Open Source Seeds’ Hope To Make Agricultural Advancements Widely Available

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An effort to keep the public in control of seeds for new varieties of vegetables and grains, rather than big universities and corporations, will try to take deeper hold Thursday.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison is one of several institutions that’s been breeding new varieties of broccoli, carrots and other vegetables and grains. The researchers have been using part of publically available cells called germ plasm.

UW-Madison horticulture professor Irwin Goldman says he and his team have been working on two new types of carrots, including one called Sovereign.

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“’Seed sovereignty’ is a phrase that cuts to the heart of what we’re trying to do,” Goldman said, “and that is that seeds could be kept free and used by the people who need them most.”

Goldman says typically, the UW would license the varieties he helps create. But Goldman says the university has agreed to allow some seeds to be part of the Open Source Seed Initiative.

UW-Madison environmental sociology professor Jack Kloppenburg says people who take a pledge at a ceremony Thursday in Madison will promise to keep seeds and plant derivatives in the public domain. Kloppenberg says that’s where greater variety is needed.

“What we need for a productive agriculture,” Kloppenberg said, “for a sustainable agriculture to meet the challenges of helping the world to feed itself and to respond to the climate change that’s coming on, is to unlock all the creativity.”

UW-Madison plant genetics graduate student Claire Luby is working on the Seed Initiative. She’s optimistic that corporations won’t rule everything.

“There’s always been an attempt to control seed,” she said, “and there’s always been a current that underlies that and the sharing that goes on between farmers and between plant breeders.”

The seed initiative is partly inspired by sharing in the open source computer software community.