Seminar - February 2019

Appropriation and Reclamation of the Kakadu Plum

Jocelyn Bosse, TH Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland

For the Food Values Research Group's first seminar of 2019, we are pleased to welcome Jocelyn Bosse.

The presentation on the access and benefit sharing regimes in Australia focuses on the Kakadu plum (Terminalia ferdinandiana), a fruit with the highest known vitamin C content in the world. A native food and traditional medicinal plant of Aboriginal communities in the northern parts (‘Top End’) of Australia, the Kakadu plum has been the object of multiple instances of appropriation via intellectual property laws, but more recently, an example of reclamation. In its emergent role in the modern Australian food system, the Kakadu plum finds itself on supermarket shelves and coating the products of commercial aquaculture, but on terms that reinforce traditional connections to country and culture.

When: Wednesday 13th February, 12-1 PM

Where: Ira Raymond Room, Barr Smith Library, North Terrace Campus, University of Adelaide (click here for campus map)

Jocelyn is a PhD candidate on the ARC Laureate Project. Jocelyn is interested in the intersection of biodiscovery research and the patent system. She is undertaking a comparative analysis of the access and benefit sharing (ABS) legislation in Australia, and the implications of the United Nations (UN) Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization to the Convention on Biological Diversity.

She completed her studies at The University of Queensland, where she studied dual Bachelors of Science/Laws (Honours) with a concurrent Diploma of Languages (French). She is a graduate of the UQ Advanced Study Program in Science (ASPinS) and conducted three undergraduate research projects in plant biology and agricultural science. The results of her rice cold tolerance research were published in Crop and Pasture Science in 2016.