The company Pure World Botanicals, which registered in the United States a patent for extract of 'maca', a Peruvian medicinal plant, has engaged in “biopiracy”, say authorities in the South American country. The maca root is used by the local indigenous groups as an energy booster and to fight sexual impotence.

Now dubbed “Andean Viagra”, after the commercially popular impotence-fighting drug, exports began in recent years — in the natural and extract forms — to Japan, Europe and the United States.

Pure World Botanicals began production of maca extract and registered it as an invention of its researchers. The firm is now demanding payment of royalties by Peruvians who export the product to the United States.

Benjamín Marticorena, president of the National Science and Technology Council, is pressing the Peruvian government and Congress to pass legislation to protect the communal property rights over medicinal plants that are part of indigenous ancestral knowledge.