| Acronym | Description |
| ABS | Access and benefit sharing |
| AMS | Agricultural Marketing Service (USDA) |
| APHIS | Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (USDA) |
| BSPB | British Society of Plant Breeders |
| C4 | Four-firm concentration ratio |
| CADE | Administrative Council for Economic Defense (Brazil) |
| CBD | Convention on Biodiversity |
| CCI | Competition Commission of India |
| CEO | Chief executive officer |
| CGIAR | Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research |
| CIAT | International Centre for Tropical Agriculture |
| CIMMYT | International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center |
| CPCSD | California Planting Cotton Seed Distributors |
| CRD | Crop reporting district (United States) |
| CRISPR | Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (gene editing technique) |
| DNA | Deoxyribonucleic acid |
| DOJ | US Department of Justice |
| DSI | Digital sequence information |
| DUCA | Data Use and Compensation Agreement |
| DUS | Distinct, uniform and stable |
| EMEA | Europe, the Middle East and Africa |
| EPO | European Patent Office |
| EU | European Union |
| EUR | Euro |
| F1 | First filial generation of offspring |
| FAO | United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization |
| FTC | US Federal Trade Commission |
| GAIN | Global Agricultural Information Network (USDA) |
| GDP | Gross domestic product |
| GEMAA | Generic Event Marketability and Access Agreement |
| GM | Genetically modified |
| GRDC | Grains Research and Development Corporation |
| HHI | Hirschman-Herfindahl Index |
| ICARDA | International Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas |
| ICRISAT | International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics |
| IITA | International Institute for Tropical Agriculture |
| ILP | International Licensing Platform - Vegetables |
| IP | Intellectual property |
| IPC | International Patent Classification |
| IRRI | International Rice Research Institute |
| ISAAA | International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications |
| ISF | International Seed Federation |
| ITPGRFA | International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture |
| MIT | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| NAFTA | North American Free Trade Agreement |
| NIAB | National Institute of Agricultural Botany (United Kingdom) |
| NLI | National List |
| NPBT | New Plant Breeding Techniques |
| NUTS2 | Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics, second level |
| ODM | Oligonucleotide-directed mutagenesis |
| OLS | Ordinary least squares |
| OSSI | Open Source Seed Initiative |
| PBI | Plant Breeding Institute (United Kingdom) |
| PBR | Plant breeders' rights |
| PLUTO | Plant variety database (maintained by UPOV) |
| PPP | Purchasing power parity |
| PVP | Plant variety protection |
| PVR | Plant variety rights |
| Q2 | Second quarter |
| R&D | Research and development |
| RdDM | RNA-dependent DNA methylation |
| RNA | Ribonucleic acid |
| SAES | State Agricultural Experiment Stations (United States) |
| SDN | Site-directed nuclease |
| SPG | Saskatchewan Pulse Growers |
| TALENs | Transcription activator-like effector nucleases |
| TRIPS | Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights |
| UK | United Kingdom |
| UPOV | International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants |
| US | United States |
| USD | US dollar |
| USDA | United States Department of Agriculture |
| USPTO | United States Patent and Trademark Office |
| VCU | Value for Cultivation and Use |
| WARDA | African Rice Centre (formerly West Africa Rice Development Association) |
| ZFN | Zinc Finger Nuclease |
Concentration in Seed Markets
Potential Effects and Policy Responses