| The protection of new varieties of plants is an outcome of science and technology progress and social development in a society. China has implemented the Regulations of the People's Republic of China on the Protection of New Varieties of Plants since 1997, and signed as a member of the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV). Since then, the protection of new varieties of plants in China has achieved a great progress. Thanks to governments and enterprises at several levels of agricultural sectors for their progressive and innovative efforts. The practical evidences indicate that implementation of these new regulations has been playing crucial roles in protecting the nation's biogenetic resources, encouraging the breeding innovations, speeding-up the industrialization of new varieties, and promoting international agricultural collaboration.However, studies are limited on the economic impacts of these regulations on new varieties protection and associated determinants. A number of questions remain unknown, which include: whether is the distribution of application number rational in structure? What are the influences of these regulations on encouraging breeder's breeding innovation? What are the practical effects of various types of the transfer of plant varieties' rights (PBR) of a new variety? What are different shareholders' awareness of and attitudes towards the new variety protection system, and how do they evaluate the factors influencing the implementation of the system? Drawing on field survey data with 82 seed companies and R&D institutes, this study aims to answer these questions by employing various statistic and econometric methods. The key findings are summarized and shown as follows:First, the number of PBR application of new varieties in China has been declining gradually in recent years, and the application number varies significantly across regions, over varieties and applicants. Among all applications and approved cases, both the number of application withdrawals and the number of variety rights revocations has increased.Second, the estimated results from modeling the determinants of innovative efforts of breeders indicate that market expectation for a new variety is the most important determinant of breeder's efforts in breeding innovation. Also, The PBR is found to be positively related to breeding innovation, however, its effect is not the greatest one among all influencing factors.Third, our findings from case study and regression analyses also show that among three variety rights usages, ownership transfer, license permit and self-execution, variety ownership transfer can often benefit the variety rights holder the most. In addition, our findings also suggest that PBR regulations have positive impacts on both variety rights holder's cost and benefit; and that the profit change depends on sensitiveness of cost and benefit to protection.Finally, this study suggests that weak propagandizing intension, inappropriate propagandizing patterns, and obstructed approaches for new regulations are all negatively contributing to the PBR. Meanwhile, the current PBR system in China still has many aspects not perfect for the future. These include the impractical design of regulatory operation, the incomplete capital market and transaction market, the loose-connection between breeding R&D and seed market, and the blindness of application.In general, several implication suggestions can be drawn on the base of the results and shown as follows: (1) increase investment in propagandizing for new variety protecting regulations in order to strengthen public awareness of the protection; (2) encourage both public and private agencies to participate in the protection of new varieties of plants; (3) smooth and consolidate the collaboration between the legislation and judicial authorities in regulating the protection of new varieties; and (4) simplify the application procedure and promote PBR markets.
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