UC Davis’ global stewardship of agricultural biotechnology research and development gained even more stature recently with official recognition by the USDA’s Biotechnology Quality Management System.

The recognition went to the Public Intellectual Property Resource for Agriculture, or PIPRA, established by UC Davis in 2004 and hosted on the Davis campus. PIPRA’s original mission: Make patented agricultural biotechnology discoveries more available to developing nations and specialty-crop farmers.

Bennett

“Since its inception, PIPRA’s efforts have extended from addressing intellectual-property and technology-transfer issues to also include regulatory and biosafety compliance issues that are fundamental in the deployment of agricultural biotechnology crops,” said Alan Bennett, a UC Davis plant sciences professor who continues as PIPRA’s founding executive director.

This made PIPRA a perfect fit for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s new Biotechnology Quality Management System, which assists public and private institutions that use government-regulated plants in biotechnology research and development.

The voluntary program helps organizations identify and analyze critical control points within research-and-development and management systems, as a way to better maintain compliance with USDA regulations related to the importation, interstate movement and field release of regulated plants.

Besides PIPRA and UC Davis, the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, is the only other public institution in the USDA program.

“Participation in this quality management system through PIPRA affirms UC Davis’ commitment to stewardship in biotechnology and demonstrates PIPRA’s leading role in agricultural biotechnology research and development,” Bennett said.

Twelve companies — including Bayer CropScience, Dow AgroSciences, Cal/West Seeds and Arcadia Biosciences Inc. — are already signed up.

Bennett said PIPRA and the UC Davis Biological Safety Office collaborated on UC Davis’ entry into the Biotechnology Quality Management System. He cited several people by name: Cecilia Chi-Ham and Mark Szczerba of the PIPRA staff, and Sean Barry, Malendia Maccree and Kim Rodegerdts of the Biological Safety Office.

Barry, the campus’s biological safety officer, said: “The adoption of this management system not only represents a milestone for our agricultural research programs, it also further underscores UC Davis’ leadership in the development of food resources for the burgeoning world population.”