There is also a way to speed up the breeding. Instead of the time-consuming creation of pure lines and the selection of the right strain among a large range of offspring, genetic manipulation allows for a more targeted improvement by transferring individual genetic characteristics. Moreover, genetic manipulation enables the breeder to cross the divide that separates species by transferring a specific gene from one species to another. The case we present here does not involve the use of transgenic cultivars. Contrary to genetic manipulation, tissue culture is a non-controversial biotechnology [33].
The different steps in the creation and adoption of new cultivars take place at different locations—the farm, the breeding station, the tissue culture lab, and the biotech laboratory—with different actors: farmers, breeders and laboratory workers. Another actor group may be involved: the extension workers who assist in the diffusion of the new crop using an array of extension techniques such as demonstration plots and Training of Trainer (ToT) programs. Extension workers may be entrenched in state, not-for-profit or for-profit organizations. The different breeding techniques are embedded in different legal contexts: farmers' rights, breeders' rights, and patenting. Patenting implies the establishment of ownership rights over a specific gene; breeders' rights entail the ownership of a specific cultivar or hybrid, and farmers' rights or farmers' privilege is the farmers' entitlement to multiply registered cultivars for their own use without compensating the breeder [25]. Farmers' rights are enshrined in the 2004 International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, which also guarantees free access to the genome of important crops through a multilateral system of access and benefit sharing [18].1
The different actor groups are embedded in different social settings where they face different constituencies and different accountabilities. Farmers respond to their local communities, although if they engage in commercial relations, their clients also hold them accountable. Breeders in public organizations such as the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA), International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), the Southern African Root Crops Research Network (SARRNET), and the International Potato Center (CIP) serve a public cause but also have to show that their organizations perform academically. If they are working for a for-profit organization, they are accountable primarily to their superiors, and ultimately to the company owners.
It is against this backdrop of multiple technologies that may be controlled at different levels that we discuss the case of orange-fleshed sweetpotato in Mozambique. The technology of plant tissue culture has a particular set of distributional consequences in this example because of its legal status as a public good, not subject to proprietary constraints, and its position in a network of actors that includes not-for-profit organizations and public laboratories dedicated to poverty alleviation and rural development. If genome and plant tissue culture facilities were privately owned and used to distribute planting materials only through profit-making networks such as in the cases described by Isabel Bortagaray and Sonia Gatchair (this issue), the orange-fleshed sweetpotato would probably not have the positive consequences it is producing for poor farmers in Mozambique today.