Basic food crops of the poor such as cassava, potato, rice and wheat receive little attention by scientists, the FAO's director-general Jacques Diouf said in the organisation's annual report.

"Neither the private nor the public sector has invested significantly in new genetic technologies for the so-called 'orphan crops' such as cowpea, millet, sorghum and tef that are critical for the food supply and livelihoods of the world's poorest people," he added.

The FAO's deputy director general, Hartwig De Haen, told a news conference, however, that "we do not want to say that the biotechnologies can solve all the problems."

He said he hoped the report "will be helpful to countries who want to have their own capacity to make their own decisions."

The report noted that private-sector research dominates biotechnology. The top 10 transnational bioscience corporations spend nearly three billion dollars a year on agricultural biotechnology research and development.

Most private investment is concentrated on cotton, maize, soybean and canola, also called rapeseed.

Last year, six countries -- Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, South Africa and the United States -- and those four crops, developed for insect resistance and herbicide tolerance, accounted for 99 percent of the global area planted in transgenic crops.

"There are no major public- or private-sector programmes to tackle the critical problems of the poor or targeting crops and animals that they rely on," the report said.

It pointed out that biotechnology is much more than genetically modified, or transgenic, organisms and said it should complement, not replace, conventional agricultural technologies.

Biotechnology can also speed up conventional animal breeding programmes and provide diagnostic tools and vaccines to help control diseases, it said.

It can reduce the use of chemicals that harm the environment and human health, improve the nutritional quality of staple foods and create new products for health and industrial uses, it added.

But poor farmers can only benefit from biotechnology products if they "have access to them on profitable terms," the report said. "Thus far, these conditions are only being met in a handful of developing countries."

Barriers to access include "inadequate regulatory procedures, complex intellectual property issues, poorly functioning markets and seed delivery systems, and weak domestic plant breeding capacity," Diouf said.

Brazil, China and India, which have the largest public agricultural research programmes in developing countries, spend less than half a billion dollars each annually, while private research in most developing countries is negligible.

A key constraint in many developing countries is the lack of agricultural research capacity, particularly in plant and animal breeding, the FAO said.

In the few developing countries where they are used, "transgenic crops have delivered large economic benefits to farmers", it said.

In China, more than four million small farmers grow insect-resistant cotton on about 30 percent of the country's total cotton area. Yields were about 20 percent higher than for conventional varieties and pesticide costs were 70 percent lower, it said.

Pesticide use was reduced by an estimated 78,000 tonnes in 2001, an amount equal to about a quarter of the total chemical pesticides used in China.

"Scientists generally agree that the transgenic crops currently being grown and the foods derived from them are safe to eat, although little is known about their long-term effects," Diouf said.

"There is less scientific agreement on the environmental impacts of transgenic crops. The legitimate concerns for the safety of each transgenic product must be addressed prior to its release. Careful monitoring of the post-release effects of these products is essential," he said.

TERRA.WIRE