This issue brief maps how international bodies, including the Convention on Biological Diversity and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, govern plant genetic resources, and how the digitization of those resources has complicated that governance. It explains the debates over ownership and benefit sharing for digital sequence information and what those debates mean for U.S. plant breeding researchers.
Plant breeding is the process of selecting plants for their desirable traits and crossing them over generations to produce crops better suited to human needs. This process has been around for thousands of years, used to develop crops with higher yields, greater drought tolerance, and stronger disease resistance. Historically, plant breeding required physical access to the plants themselves, whether through seeds, cuttings, or other reproductive materials. Genetic engineering has changed this process and allowed scientists to more readily develop plant varieties that may not occur naturally.
Whether through conventional plant breeding or genetic engineering, plant breeding has created the foundation of our global food system. But the use of existing plant material, evolved over millennia and cultivated for countless generations, raises unsettled questions over ownership and compensation.
In our current global food system, the people or companies that commercialize new plant varieties benefit financially from seed sale profits and intellectual property royalties. However, plant breeders often look to plants from around the world to find the traits they need, like resistance to pests and diseases, tolerance to drought or flooding, and better nutritional quality. The people who supply the initial material for these breeding projects—often Indigenous communities and smallholder farmers in biodiverse regions of Latin America, Africa, and Asia—typically see little economic benefit from the commercialization of varieties that draw on their stewardship work.
The shift toward data-driven and, increasingly, automated breeding techniques has complicated this landscape by reducing the need for physical material. Genetic resources have been digitized, which makes them easier to distribute and more difficult to track. Because the relevant frameworks are housed in different international bodies with different memberships and enforcement mechanisms, there is no single forum with clear authority to resolve the questions around the fair exchange of digital sequence information.
In this resource, we define digital sequence information, identify the international bodies that have been involved in issues related to ownership and benefits, explain why digital sequence information is difficult to govern, and outline how these decisions affect researchers in the United States as these debates continue.
Acknowledgments
This issue brief was authored by Paulina Jenney of Seedhead Strategies in partnership with Kristina (Kiki) Hubbard (Seedhead Strategies), Emily Spiegel (CAFS), and Haley Rowlands (CAFS) and with editorial and production support from Laurie Beyranevand JD’03 (CAFS) and Austin Price (CAFS). This resource was designed by Hoan Marketing.
Suggested Citation
Ctr. for Agric. & Food Sys., Digital Sequence Information on Plants: Who Owns It, and Who’s Owed? (2026), https://cafs.vermontlaw.edu/resource-library/digital-sequence-information-on-plants.
