Planting monopolies in farm sector

The EU free trade deal may force India to jettison farmers’ traditional rights in favour of breeders’ interests

- LATHA JISHNU

IN THIS season of Christmas cheer, there is much to celebrate in the traditions that have come to be associated with the festival. And there is much for business to celebrate in the symbols and customs intrinsic to the festival. For instance, the poinsettia, a plant that has been associated with Christmas since the 16th century. Although it is now available in many hues, its traditional red and green foliage is widely used in Christmas floral decorations.

The shrub, known for its showy red bracts or modified leaves, is native to Mexico and was used by the Aztecs for dyeing their garments and as an antipyretic medicine. How the cuetlaxochitl, meaning "flower that grows in residues" in the Aztec language, became the Christmas Eve flower of modern times as well as a top-selling potted plant is a story replete with patents, a market monopoly and a leaked trade secret that finally undermined one American family's control of the business in the 1990s after a nearly 100-year run.

Brought to the US by the country's first ambassador to Mexico, Joel Poinsett, a botanist, the poinsettia was named after him. It caught the fancy of Albert Ecke, an émigré from Germany, who sold it on the streets of Los Angeles. His son and grandson promoted the attractive variations they developed through a grafting technique to create fuller, more compact plants than the weedy original. Their intensive marketing of a regular release of new varieties turned the poinsettia into the most popular potted plant in America, accounting for sales of more than US $250 million annually, a big chunk of it in the weeks leading up to Christmas.