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2 December 2022PatentsSarah Speight

Exclusive: green food tech innovation outpaces global patents benchmark

Custom data analysis for WIPR uncovers ‘surprising’ growth of sustainable food tech sector | AI, blockchain and 5G thought likely to spur innovation in agrarian tech | Clarivate.

The sustainable food technology sector has exceeded growth expectations, with artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain and 5G connectivity thought likely to fuel future growth.

“Sustainable Food Production and Agritech—A Patent & Innovation Report, 2010-2022”, produced by Clarivate exclusively for WIPR, shows that innovation in the technology required for sustainable food production grew strongly and kept pace with other technologies throughout the decade.

The global data uncovered notably higher patent activity in sustainable food technology than overall activity in the patent space for technology overall, which could be expected to have significant implications for IP.

While some underlying technologies experienced a decline, other sustainable technologies picked up pace in recent areas of innovation.

Overall the number of filings for sustainable food technology is maintaining a figure close to 3,000 per year, while all inventions listed in the Derwent World Patents Index (DWPI) are falling.

Digital capabilities

Arun Hill, senior consultant at Clarivate who produced the report, said that sustainable food technology has “outpaced the global benchmark by quite a significant amount”, which he found to be the most important takeaway from the findings.

“Inventive activity in sustainable food production and agritech has been robust over the last decade, even at times outpacing the global benchmark for patent activity.

“For something to outpace global activity, based on roughly 20 million patterns—that is quite an achievement in itself,” he remarked. “So it does tell us that, in terms of output, that it's performing way higher than what we'd expect with any industry.”

He indicated the wider implications of this growth for other digital technologies.

“In future, we might expect things like AI, blockchain and 5G connectivity to infuse agrarian technologies with more advanced digital capabilities,” he told WIPR.

Tissue culture and genetic engineering

The top five underlying technologies in this field uncovered by the research, in order of the number of inventions, were tissue culture techniques (9,841 inventions); the genetic engineering of plants (9,351); plant protection (5,320); organic fertilisers (4,205); and soilless cultivation technologies (2,978).

The highest growth frequency among these categories was in tissue culture techniques, followed by organic fertilisers and soilless cultivation technologies. This suggests that innovators are focusing more on sustainable solutions while moving away from technologies that were previously in vogue, such as the use of biocides and plant protection formulation.

Meanwhile, the study revealed a decline in the use of modification methods of plant genetics.

US leads the way

Other notable findings include country-specific activity, with the US being by far the largest contributor of innovations in this field, with almost half (47%) of inventions emerging from the country.

South Korea and Japan lead the way in Asia (the analysis excludes domestic Chinese patent publications with no corresponding patent publication filed outside China). In Europe, Russia takes the top filing spot, followed by the European Patent Office (EPO).

Top filing companies, meanwhile, were German firm Bayer, and US-based Corteva Agriscience, which filed the largest number of inventions during the decade overall at 4,460 and 2,951 respectively. UK-based BASF and Chinese company Sinochem, followed closely behind, with these four top filers focusing on plant protection compositions.

The research shows that innovators at the forefront are focusing on genetically modified crops and plants, soilless cultivation and agritech devices and equipment that save and reduce the time and effort in plant cultivation.

Several academic and research institutes from Asian countries were among the most active innovators, focusing on soilless cultivation, stress resistant plants, and plant protection formulations.

Geographical specialisms

In terms of which technologies the different countries honed in on, the US concentrated on tissue culture techniques and the genetic engineering of plants, while the Republic of Korea—the second largest contributing country—showed a higher focus on organic fertilisers and plant protection.

These two areas were also more of a focal point for Germany, India, the EPO and Russia.

Meanwhile, soilless cultivation was a high focus area for Asian countries led by the Republic of Korea, Taiwan and Japan.

Out of the top 10 patent assignees, most showed a high focus on tissue culture techniques and the genetic engineering of plants—for example, the US filed 8,577 and 6,854 in these technologies respectively.

Strong collaboration

Finally, collaboration between commercial and academic research proved to be high, with academic and government institutions representing a 17% invention share.

This is double the usual benchmark percentage for collaborations, indicating that the fundamental research coming out of the research organisations is still crucial in this field.

Hill highlighted some of the more surprising findings of the research.

“Just from looking at this data, it is possible that the exponential growth in this technology happened earlier than 10 years ago, which is perhaps quite an unusual conclusion for most of the technologies we look at,” he said.

He pointed out that agritech is not a new technology, but new capabilities are being developed in this space.

“You still had agritech 100 years ago, it just had different foundational technologies. It’s not necessarily a completely new industry, it's just that the capabilities are new.

“We're at the intersection of two technological capabilities here—we've got the genetic techniques, which emerged in the early noughties. And then we've got the development of this agritech industry, and the application of those genetic techniques to plant to agriculture.

“Obviously, that's one of the biggest applications, so there's quite a strong intersection between those two technologies.”

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