The focus of this thesis is to explore the influence of market power possessed by seed input companies on rent distribution in an identity preserved production and marketing system. This thesis develops a theoretical model to estimate rent distribution between participants in an identity preserved production and marketing system under constrained production and the elicitation of a premium from market development activities in the presence of a range of seed ownership structures. The thesis employs an empirical model to examine rent distribution of two varieties involved in the Canadian Wheat Boards Identity Preserved Contract Program.<p> The theoretical model demonstrates that market development activities for an identity preserved production and marketing program had a diminished impact on farmers when the seed industry possessed a large degree of market power. The finding of the theoretical model were consistent with that of the empirical model, where the price of certified seed for varieties involved in the identity preserved production and marketing program were priced higher than conventional varieties. The difference in price was found to be greater than the premiums offered by the Identity Preserved Contract Program marketing and/or production contracts for Saskatchewan farmers that received average yields and average prices of grain.

The focus of this thesis is to explore the influence of market power possessed by seed input companies on rent distribution in an identity preserved production and marketing system. This thesis develops a theoretical model to estimate rent distribution between participants in an identity preserved production and marketing system under constrained production and the elicitation of a premium from market development activities in the presence of a range of seed ownership structures. The thesis employs an empirical model to examine rent distribution of two varieties involved in the Canadian Wheat Boards Identity Preserved Contract Program.<p> The theoretical model demonstrates that market development activities for an identity preserved production and marketing program had a diminished impact on farmers when the seed industry possessed a large degree of market power. The finding of the theoretical model were consistent with that of the empirical model, where the price of certified seed for varieties involved in the identity preserved production and marketing program were priced higher than conventional varieties. The difference in price was found to be greater than the premiums offered by the Identity Preserved Contract Program marketing and/or production contracts for Saskatchewan farmers that received average yields and average prices of grain.

Mucosal passive immunization is the transfer of active antibodies from one organism to the mucosal surfaces of another organism for preventing or treating infectious diseases. Mucosal passive immunization has a great potential for the prevention and treatment of enteric infections like Rotavirus, which causes more than 114 million episodes of diarrhoea annually with a death toll of more than 450.000 per year. However, the high cost of recombinant antibodies with the current manufacturing systems based on mammalian cells hampers the production of the high antibody quantities required for passive immunization strategies. Alternative expression platforms such as plants could provide higher scalability and reduced costs. Moreover, the use of edible plant organs, which are Generally¿Regarded¿As¿ Safe (GRAS), could reduce manufacturing costs even further by easing the requirements for antibody purification. We analyze here the feasibility of utilizing fruits as inexpensive biofactories of human antibodies that can be orally delivered as crude extracts or partially purified formulations in mucosal passive immunization strategies. In the first section of this thesis, the construction of tomato plants producing a model human Immunoglobulin A (IgA) against rotavirus in their fruits is described. As a result, an elite homozygous line was obtained whose fruits produced on average 41 ¿g of IgA per gram of fresh weigh, equivalent to 0.69 mg IgA per gram of dry tomato powder. Minimally processed products derived from IgA¿expressing tomatoes were shown to strongly inhibit virus infection in an in vitro neutralization assay. Moreover, in order to make IgA¿expressing tomatoes easily distinguishable from wild¿type tomatoes, they were sexually crossed with a transgenic tomato line expressing the genes encoding Antirrhinum majus Rosea1 and Delila transcription factors, which confer purple colour to the fruit. The resulting transgenically¿labelled purple tomatoes contained not only high levels of recombinant neutralizing human IgA but also increased amounts of anthocyanins. In the second section of the thesis the composition of IgA¿expressing tomatoes was analyzed in search of possible unintended effects that could compromise the GRAS status of the final product. To this end, transgenic IgA¿tomatoes were compared with wild type tomatoes and also commercial tomato varieties using proteomic and metabolomic approaches. 2D¿DIGE gels coupled with LC¿MSMS for protein identification showed that all the uptrend differential proteins detected corresponded only to immunoglobulin chains or antibody fragments. On the other hand, non¿targeted metabolite data obtained by UPLC¿MS / Juárez Ortega, P. (2014). Production of recombinant Immunoglobulin A in plants for passive immunotherapy [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/37015 / TESIS