Article
Business Law and Agribusiness Perspectives on Functional Crop Commercialization: A Systematic Review
The biochemically enhanced functional crops have tremendous potential to increase the nutritional security, generate value added agriculture and boost the rural economy in India through commercialization. Notwithstanding these developments, the legal and regulatory framework for agribusiness entrepreneurship is still fragmented among several laws and institutional frameworks, such as food safety law, agricultural marketing law, intellectual property law, environmental governance, consumer protection law and contract
farming law. This fragmentation can make it difficult for entrepreneurs, Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs), agribusiness startups, and others interested in the commercialization of innovative agricultural products to comply. In this study, a systematic review of the literature is conducted, based on both a doctrinal and policy-analysis perspective, of existing legal and regulatory mechanisms with regard to the commercialisation of functional crops. The review is a synthesis of evidence on food safety governance, biofortification policies, value chain management, entrepreneurial ecosystems, digital traceability, and institutional support to highlight the key obstacles in food safety laws and governance to support sustainable agribusiness development. The results show that despite the various policy measures already taken to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship in agriculture, Indian agriculture is not having an integrated regulatory environment that is restricting market access, compliance complexity, and functional crop enterprises' commercial scalability. Given these results, a Legal–Agribusiness Commercialization Framework is proposed, which integrates all components of regulatory compliance, governance of food safety, coordination of the value chain, support for entrepreneurs and management of innovation in a single policy perspective. This review connects business law to agribusiness development and sustainable commercialization and offers practical insights for policy makers, legal professionals, entrepreneurs and researchers aiming to create resilient, competitive and innovation rich agribusiness ecosystems.