If it’s Indian it has to be pure Basmati, otherwise call it Fred

The US Patent Office said RiceTec, the Alvin, Texas-based company which markets long-grained rice under the name Texmati was given a utility and not a plant patent for a cultivator of Basmati rice.

The company has earlier patented strains of corn and other new mutations of grains.

The office saidthat at no point had RiceTec asked that the rice it developed be called Basmati.

The patent document, a copy of which has been obtained by this newspaper, details the high quality of Basmati rice which it says originally comes from India and Pakistan.

"The invention relates to novel rice lines and to plants and grains of these rice lines and to a method for breeding these lines…one aspect of the invention relates to novel rice lines whose plants are semi-dwarf in nature, substantially photoperiod insensitive and high-yielding and produce rice grains having characteristics similar to those of good quality Basmati rice" which traditionally come from northern India and Pakistan, the abstract to the patent says.

There are some developments in the method of cooking the newly-invented Basmati-like rice and according to the patent, the rice line is high-yielding, disease-tolerant and high tilling.

Coupe said the Basmati-like rice that had been patented was a dwarf variety that grows in north, south andcentral America.

"I hope people understand that no one is going to take the Basmati rice away from India," she said.

Coupe’s remarks come as a controversy rages in India over the patent amidst suggestions that New Delhi is considering whether to ask the US Patents Office to review the case or to complain to the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) treaty on intellectual property to defend its rights.

India is within its rights to challenge the patent although trade officials in Geneva say the basis for India’s possible complaint remains unclear.

India’s WTO officials were not available for comment. "We have no request from India in Washington to review the case," a US official in Geneva monitoring the developments said.

India exports some 12 billion rupees worth of Basmati rice annually, about one-fifth of it to the United States. In the United Kingdom, Europe’s largest market for Basmati, the rice is described as long-grained and aromatic and grown only in India and Pakistan. Saudi Arabia allowsBasmati rice originating only in the sub-continent to be sold as such in its markets.

"RiceTec won’t get a trademark on Basmati – I am not even sure they can identify it as a type of Basmati," one of the the officials at the Patent Office said.