The institutional framework advanced in Rausser and Johnson are satisfied by a constitutional smart contract . When structuring the constitutional design, any prescription must essentially define: the degree of centralization; the balance of power; identifying interest groups; the space of issues over which those interests can negotiate; the degree of consensus that is sufficient to conclude negotiations; and the appropriate course if negotiations break down .Second, smart contracts can provide legal and regulatory infrastructure that allow for the strict reinforcement of the constitution. In particular, the security or private property, enforcement of contracts, and assignment of liability for wrongful damage must be established . This is consistent with the Institutional Analysis and Development framework’s scope and payoff rules . This allows DAO partnerships to have greater transparency and “prescriptive force,” or the knowledge and acceptance of a rule leads individuals to recognize that if they break the rule, other individuals may hold them accountable .Third, DAOs, by design, admit that the collective interest of the PPRDP is able, for crucial matters, to rise above immediate self-interest of any particular participants . This is accomplished by allocating the majority of tokens to public sector agents, who have internal incentives and mechanisms to preserve the advancements of fundamental knowledge. Fourth, provisions that discourage collusive activities coupled with policies that provide opportunities to partners who have a comparative advantage are key in achieving sustainable economic growth . The transparency and accurate logging of data using block chain technology allows for these provisions to be fulfilled.

While DAOs have a systemic risk of shadow centralization, in which a cabal of rent-seeking interest groups will collude to gain majority decision-making power, a governance provision of the constitutional smart contract will provide the public sector partner, or universities,vertical grow rack system with 51% of all voting rights to order to assure the partnership will ultimately be to conduct fundamental research with positive spillovers in the space industry. One possible approach to structure the partnership is summarized here. After the PPRDP fee is paid, partners will receive “soul bound” governance tokens , or irrevocable tokens that cannot be sold or transferred to another wallet, to join the DAO. Because of its unique attributes, SBTs can accurately represent and store an entity’s credentials, history with the PPRDP , as well as implement reputation-based voting, which reduces the occurrence of Sybil attacks and can incentivize active and meaningful participation. Because SBTs can create “novel markets with decomposable, shared rights, and permissions” , control rights for IP are less susceptible to IP theft and administrative transaction costs. With these tokens, PPRDP partners have an active say into the governance structure and process. The amount of tokens unlocked will decrease over time; a company who joins the PPRDP in the first year will be allocated more tokens in comparison to a company who joins in the fourth year. The university partner would allocate its governance tokens to researchers, professors, and staff members in order to satisfy the decentralization requirement. Other than governance power, a key utility in holding SBTs is the eligibility to buy security tokens for research projects that are in progress within the PPRDP. Security tokens reflect the potential market value of research discoveries that may well lead to patents and/or commercial applications; such tokens are akin to equity shares of startup companies. During the inception phase, an initial coin offering will be conducted with a valuation that estimates what an investor would be willing to spend on an IP of a similar type. Based on the market share percentage and choice, a PPRDP partner would own either: a proportionate percentage of the patent’s income streams ; right of first refusals; exclusive licensing rights or proportionate payout from another PPRDP partner.

Ultimately, a PPRDP in which the sharing and structure for sharing any value of discoveries are determined by the PPRDP.PPRDP participants can sell security tokens with one another at market prices or sell it back to the university at a 25% discounted price should they lose faith or have high opportunity costs for other research projects. In other words, liquidity is provided for all PPRDP partners with mechanisms to prevent premature investment retractions, mitigating liquidity concerns industry partners are burdened with while hedging financial risk for public partners. In fact, PPRDP partners are incentivized to provide research personnel or in-kind services in exchange for additional security tokens and increased probability of research discoveries. No more than 51% of total security tokens offering should be sold before the maturity of IPs; the public sector would collectively maintain a majority stake in all holdings to protect the public sector interest and research agenda by prohibiting collusive action from participating private firms.Engineering resistance for agricultural improvement presently incorporates diverse strategies to mitigate the crop losses imposed by pathogens. For instance, traditional breeding has been strengthened and streamlined with the advent of new molecular markers for rapid selection of desired traits. Transgenic technology provides a complement to some of the weaknesses inherent in traditional breeding. This includes altering the expression of endogenous components from specific and broad-based pathogen resistance signaling pathways as well as utilizing genes from other species. Further analyses are providing insight into other means of inducing inherent plant defense responses through refined chemical and hormone treatments. The control of viruses and a bacterial pathogen using transgene expression in planta to initiate RNA silencing has also shown great promise.Shortly after the re-discovery of Mendel’s laws of heritability, qualitative traits were identified in wheat that conferred resistance to the rust pathogen Puccinia striiformis . Subsequently, numerous qualitative loci have been identified in diverse plant species that confer resistance .

Most of these loci do not confer broad-spectrum resistance; rather, the resistance is limited to subgroups within pathogen species. Likewise, diverse isolates of a particular pathogen species have been shown to contain loci that prevent the pathogen from successfully causing disease on the host . Flor developed a model based upon classical genetics using flax, Linum ultissimom, and the fungal pathogen Melamspora lini. His ‘gene-for-gene’ theory states that the plant resistance locus [R] and the pathogen avirulence determinant [avr] must both be present toobserve phenotypic resistance in the host . For any given plant and potential pathogen pair, an incompatible interaction is the product of these two loci. If the plant lacks the R locus or the pathogen lacks the avr determinant, then a compatible interaction is the outcome. The R gene products are hypothesized to act as receptors for the products of the avirulence locus. Thus Flor’s findings demonstrate that for many host–pathogen relationships,vertical farming companies resistance [R] and avirulence [avr] loci dictate the outcome of varying combinations of host and pathogen genotypes. R gene-mediated resistance is an economical method to control losses in the field and breeders have mobilized R genes into virtually all improved lines. Often this genetic mechanism of resistance lacks long-lasting durability in the field. In terms of Flor’s ‘gene-for-gene’ theory, the pathogen responds to selection pressure by altering or eliminating the avirulence determinant. When the pathogen eliminates the cognate avr gene product, the R gene can no longer perceive the product of the avirulence locus. Plants have responded to these dynamic genetic changes of the pathogen by generating their own clusters of diverse resistance loci . Over the past decade,vertical farming compa a number of R loci and avr loci have been cloned from diverse species of plants and pathogens.As noted above, monogenic resistance frequently is not durable in the field when exposed to high levels of pathogen pressure. One strategy to control pathogen outbreaks in the field is to cultivate plants with diverse genetic backgrounds within a single field. This agricultural practice has been shown to dramatically reduce yield losses caused by the rice fungal pathogen Magnaporthe grisea in repeated field studies . For many crops, utilization of this approach may provide a mechanism for conferring long-term, durable resistance. For some crops, planting and harvesting a field planted with diverse germplasm may not always be practical. Thus it would be useful to develop disease control strategies that would benefit farming practices that still rely on monculture. The use of gene pyramiding offers an attractive mechanism by which multiple resistance loci, each recognizing a unique range of isolates of a pathogen species, may be incorporated into a single cultivar . The combined presence of these R loci ensures that only pathogens devoid of all cognate avirulence loci perceived by the R loci combination can cause disease and. With the advent of molecular markers tightly linked to resistance loci, simultaneous selection of multiple resistance loci has been facilitated. This strategy of marker assisted selection also allows for the selection against undesirable chromosomal segments known to carry unfavorable agronomic traits as well as the successful incorporation of recessive resistance genes.

The interaction of cultivated rice, Oryza sativa, and a bacterial pathogen, Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae offers a clear example of the benefits of gene pyramiding. One set of gene pyramiding experiments was performed using two completely dominant resistance genes, Xa21 and Xa4, and two recessive genes, xa5 and xa13 . Each of these resistance genes confers resistance to distinct isolates of Xoo and individually these R genes have been overcome by known field isolates . The efficacy of the disease resistance conferred by combinations of these four different resistance loci was evaluated in controlled environments as well as in field studies.These results demonstrate the utility and efficacy of gene pyramiding for generating broad-spectrum resistance to Xoo, although this finding does not suggest that combinations of four genes will lead to durable resistance per se. One caveat in gene pyramiding is that any given resistance locus may have variable penetrance. It should not be assumed that each R gene introgressed into any genetic background will display full phenotypic resistance. Therefore each set of R genes incorporated into a cultivar must be evaluated systematically requiring a significant investment of time. However, it is clear that gene pyramiding offers an attractive mechanism for combining the individual specificities of R genes as well as taking advantage of their synergistic effects to generate broad-spectrum resistance.Occasionally, the loss or mutation of an avirulence locus is associated with reduced pathogen fitness. In pepper, bacterial spot disease has been controlled effectively using the Bs2 resistance locus in breeding programs. The durability of Bs2 is due to the widespread conservation of the avrBs2 locus in diverse pathogen isolates of Xanthomonas campestris pv. vesicatoria. Mutation of avrBs2 prevents wild type levels of bacterial growth on susceptible pepper cultivars lacking Bs2 . Another example is found in rice where a functional avrXa7 avirulence locus is required for full virulence of Xoo . Isolates carrying an avrXa7 mutation can cause disease in the presence of the Xa7 R gene although greenhouse tests demonstrated that the severity of disease was reduced . Tests have further demonstrated that spontaneous mutants of avrXa7 could be recovered from Xa7 plants in the field; however these virulent isolates did not persist. Field tests over six years demonstrated that the presence of Xa7 was sufficient to prevent any Xoo epidemics even when avrXa7 mutants had appeared . In contrast, these field tests demonstrated that epidemics were common in fields planted with rice carrying the Xa10 R gene. Xoo with mutations in avrXa10 displayed no loss of fitness in controlled studies and disease in the field was common on Xa10 plants over the same 6-year analysis . These results indicate that some R genes can confer durable resistance if loss of their cognate avirulence locus confers some fitness penalty for the pathogen. Using such R/avr combinations may be a rational strategy for generating durable resistance.An alternate strategy to breeding is to directly introduce a cloned resistance gene into a plant via transgenic technology. Introduction of a gene by transgenic means can overcome the limitations of traditional breeding, namely interspecies sterility. Additionally, transgenic technologies allows multiple genes to be inserted simultaneously. However, validation of the function of the transgene and its stability and heritability after transformation requires a significant investment of time and resources. Further, the transgenic lines must also undergo subsequent analysis for agronomic traits before release.