Background: The Community Reforestation Research Programme is a joint initiative between eThekwini Municipality and the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. Addressing complex sustainable development issues requires collaboration across disciplines and between researchers, practitioners and policy-makers. Understanding how this occurs has the potential to inform and improve transitions to sustainability.Objectives: A summative evaluation of one project within the broader programme was commissioned to develop in-depth understandings into the underlying systemic influences or mechanisms that supported or hindered transdisciplinary research and practices.Method: A realist evaluation method informed the analysis of questionnaires, documents, interviews, focus group discussions and participation in programme reporting and planning processes. This approach supported the development of a contextual profile within which underlying mechanisms were identified. These mechanisms were considered in relation to the outcomes of the project.Results: The main mechanisms identified in the evaluation process related to orientations to research, orientations to education, orientations to value creation, orientations to environmental management and orientations to organisational leadership. These orientations either enabled or hindered particular outcomes in the research on, and environmental management of, community reforestation in the context of climate change. The mechanisms also had significant implications for understanding ‘what worked well for whom in what circumstances and how’.Conclusion: Transdisciplinary research and practice across institutional boundaries are enabled or hindered by underlying mechanisms. By identifying and understanding these mechanisms, insights were developed that have the potential to enhance transdisciplinary sustainability initiatives at the local level.

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atented seed technologies are in part responsible for the vast increase in U.S. farm productivity over the past several decades. Indeed, the vast majority of all corn, soybean, and cotton seed grown in the U.S. today were developed through the use of either plant breeding methods, genetic engineering, or both. The seed industry is now worth more than $25 billion worldwide. Major seed companies include Pioneer Hi-Bred (a subsidiary of DuPont), Monsanto, and Syngenta, among others. PThe increasing value of proprietary seed technologies has spawned renewed interest in intellectual property (IP) rights relating to new plant varieties. Numerous IP rights are available to inventors of new plants. Asexually reproducing plant varieties such as roses, fruit trees, and grapevines are protectable by plant patents. Plants that reproduce by flowering and production of seeds may be protected by Plant Variety Protection (PVP) Certificates and by utility patents.Seeds protected by PVP Certificates may be used by third parties in breeding as there is a research exemption for PVP Certificates. In contrast, third parties require a license to use seeds protected by utility patents as no research exemption exists for utility patents.Plant Variety Certificates cover varieties that are indistinguishable from the protected variety and varieties essentially derived from the protected variety. Broader plant intellectual property rights are available via utility patents.A utility patent can protect the variety itself and the trait embodied by the variety.Michael R. Ward, Ph.D. (mward@mofo.com), is co-chair of intellectual property practice and chair of patent practice, Rachel Krevans is partner, and Matthew Chivvis is associate at Morrison & Foerster.

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