Genetically modified (GM) crops have already made such tailor-made harvests a reality. With large, private transnational firms and research institutions in the US and Europe holding patents on such technologies, developing countries like India, that are unable to afford fat royalties, may be deprived of their benefits.

A recent report of the Indian National Science Academy (INSA) has urged private corporations and research institutions holding GM technologies ``under strict patents and licensing agreements'' to share them with responsible scientists for hunger alleviation and enhancing food security in developing countries that deserve their benefits the most.

Prepared under the auspices of the Royal Society of London, US National Society of Sciences and Third World Academy of Sciences, along with their Brazilian, Chinese and Mexican counterparts, the report entitled ``Transgenic Plants and World Agriculture'' says special exemptions should also be given to the world's poor farmers-like allowing them to save the seeds for their re-use (rather than needing to buy seeds from patent holders during each cultivation).

Rice and wheat seeds have already been genetically modified to contain antibodies against certain types of cancer. These crops would help in detecting cancer much among the consumers much before cancer manifests itself. With a similar modification, rice seeds can also contain three to four times the usual iron in them or yellow coloured rice seeds can be programmed to contain higher concentrations of beta carotenne, a precursor of vitamin A.

Such rice can take care of the iron or vitamin-A deficiency among pregnant mothers or malnourished children without the government's having to resort to an expensive and complicated nutrition supplement programmes.

According to the report, vitamin-A deficiency causes half a million children of the world to become partially or totally blind each year and the three new genes introduced into the rice-two from daffodils and one from a micro organism, to make them contain higher concentration of beta carotene, a precursor to vitamin-A.

GM crops also hold out a hope to farmers if they are modified to resist a specific pest. While a virus resistant papaya has already been commercialised and grown in Hawaii since 1996, a salt-resistant gene from mangrooves has been identified, cloned and transferred to other plants. These plants were then found to be tolerant to higher concentration of salt and could be used for cultivation in coastal areas.

``Introduction of transgenic plants will reduce dependence on pesticides, benefiting the environment,'' the report further adds. In the context of wide protests in certain developed countries on the possible side effects of such ``Frankenstein'' crops for humans, the report recommends that public health regulatory systems should to put in place in every country to identify and monitor any potential adverse effects on human health due to transgenic plants.

Information, it says, should be easily made available to the public on how their food supply is regulated and its safety ensured. To ensure that the benefit of GM technology become available to developing countries, the report has recommended the setting up of an international advisory committee to assess the interests of private companies and developing countries in the generation and use of transgenic plants.