China Representative Appointed Council Chairman of International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants 

On 28 October 2022, the 56th meeting of the Council of the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) was convened in the headquarters of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva, Switzerland.

 

During the meeting, election of a new council of the UPOV took place, and Mr. Cui Yehan, the chief agronomist of Development Center of Science and Technology under Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of China (MARA), was unanimously appointed by relevant member states as chairman of the UPOV council. This is the first time that a representative of China has assumed this important role in the highest decision-making body within the organisation.

 

China has been endeavoring to improve protection of new plant varieties in the country in particular since joining the UPOV in 1999. For the past five years, it has ranked top in the world by number of applications for new plant varieties, seeing 9,700 applications for plant variety rights and 3218 grants of rights in 2021.

 

The UPOV, administered by the WIPO, is an intergovernmental organisation established in 1961 by the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (the "UPOV Convention"), which seeks to protect new varieties of plants in the interests of both agricultural development and plant breeders.