No takers for Mardi's end-products

CHEWY fruit strips, herbs with health properties and superior animal feed. These are only some of the products which the Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (Mardi) has developed, but not many people know about them.

The reason? Many of these products remain in the laboratory instead of reaching end users as they do not get commercialised and patented.

Mardi’s mission is "to develop and promote leading-edge technologies for the advancement of food and agriculture industries" but what good is research if there are no takers for the end-products?

The institute’s director-general Dr Abdul Shukor Abdul Rahman said Mardi’s three main outputs were products, processes and information.

However, these have to be innovated or they would be worthless to the end-user.

"The value chain of bringing in any findings from the laboratory to the table starts with research, development and commercialisation," he said.

Under the Ninth Malaysia Plan, Mardi will receive continuous funding from the Agriculture and Agro-based Industry Ministry for its research and development.

In 2006 alone, RM125 million was allocated for 85 projects. Mardi also gets funding from the Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry, totalling some RM45 million last year.

With more than 95 products and technologies ready to be commercialised and another 71 which have the potential for commercialisation, it would seem that it is indeed money well spent.

However, very few of the products developed by Mardi have been patented and commercialised.

One example is the transgenic papaya — Mardi’s solution for the devastating papaya virus problem (Papaya ringspot virus) which has plagued papaya plantations around the world.

Unfortunately, the transgenic papaya is still confined to the greenhouse and is not allowed to be grown outside as it is awaiting biosafety clearance.

So, just how much of Mardi’s technology has actually been patented?

Abdul Shukor admitted that gaining property rights was important but the patenting process took a long time — five to six years.

Furthermore, he said, patenting a product was not under Mardi’s jurisdiction but it had to go through Sirim which was the patent agent.

"Also, it is very costly to get a product patented overseas but the government has already taken that into consideration."

Over the past 10 years, Mardi has put in 14 applications to have its products or technology patented.

Out of these, one has been granted and one has been rejected while the others are still pending.

Abdul Shukor said Mardi would apply for more patents in the future, not just in Malaysia, but in other countries where he felt that their products could be "duplicated or copied".

Products which have yet to be patented are being value-added to ensure they are competitive enough for the international market.

Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers vice-president Datuk Paul Low said one of the reasons behind the lack of takers for Mardi’s inventions was that most local agriculture-based manufacturers were very small companies.

"To my knowledge, there are not that many agriculture-based players in Malaysia with enough funding to commercialise Mardi’s inventions, except for the government," he said.

Low said big, multinational companies like Nestle had their own research division and did not need to rely on Mardi.

"Research must be done in collaboration with the industry. The end-products must have the potential for commercialisation. If not, nobody would want to take it."

Intellectual Property Corporation of Malaysia (MyIPO) senior patent examiner Kamal Kormin said it takes a long time to grant patents because patent examiners had to do a worldwide check to see if anybody else had patented the product or technology.

Source :NST (7th January 2007)