"Illegal" propagation

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by tommytonk

Isnt it true that monsanto has patented the genes of wild tomatoes?

tommy

Do you mean "wild" varieties or genes from the other species of tomatoes of which there are about 15 different species, to date.

One can't patent anything unless an improvement has been shown from the original. And since we still don't know how tomatoes got to Mexico and in what form, there;'s no way to know what the original of a wild one would be in the highlands of Chile or Peru/

And since Monsanto is not in the tomato breeding business I can't see them patenting anything re tomatoes.

Yes, they bought out Seminis of which one subsidiary is Petoseed which does develop tomato varieties, but the genes that have been used in breeding purposes of disease tolerance, high solids, uniform ripening gene and so much more are available to any hybridizer who can document their experience and get those varieties via The Rick Center at UC Davis in CA.

And they bought Seminis which is composed of several companies as an investment since the price was right. So many folks expected them to force Petoseed to breed some GMO's. but that hasn't happened in all the years that M has owned S, and I don't think will ever happen.

There are several folks here at Tville who have been using some of those accessions in their own breeding projects, same at other message sites, and quite a few are also listed in the SSE YEarbooks in the other species section.

So I, at least, can't see Monsanto trying to patent any so called "wild" tomato genes or any of the species, as far as that goes, since they're all widely available if you know where to go to get them.