Although Nagaland was endowed with medicinal herbs, plants and agri and horticultural crops, they were not well documented.
Farmers in the state might lose legal rights of ownership over them if the species were not documented at the earliest, Joint Director, ICAR (Nagaland) Dr. B. P. Bhatt said.
He emphasized the need for educating farmers on various aspects of the patent regime and the rights of the community over the traditional knowledge system which had been passed down from generation to generation.
He was speaking at ‘Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers Rights Act (PPV & FRA),’ jointly organized by ICAR and Nagaland State Agricultural Research Station (SARS) at Yisemyong near Mokokchung.
The role of PPV and FRA in documentation of agri-horti-germplasm, intervention of academic institutions in crop diversity conservation and documentation and conservation of medicinal plants in Nagaland were discussed.