"The mapping of the rice genome is very important because it can influence the world's food security, poverty elimination as well as the welfare of farmers," Mr Singh said. "What FAO would expect from the multinationals...is that they make seeds available to farmers at affordable prices.

"The private sector must understand that (it) has to share the technology and bring the benefits of this new technology to farmers at the affordable price," he said in an interview. Syngenta said that it and collaborative partner Myriad Genetics Inc, had mapped the rice genome, an advance that would eventually lead to healthier, more disease-resistant crops, Syngenta said. A genome contains the basic information that makes up living organisms encoded in chromosones made up of double-stranded chains of DNA.

Environmental concerns Genetic modification of foods is controversial and is opposed by many environmentalists, including Greenpeace, on the grounds that it could have unpredictable effects on the ecosystem. Mr Singh said adequate research should be done to ensure there were no risks from the new seeds. "We have to look at whether the new technology would have any impact on the environment or human consumption. We have to look into it and ensure that we will not introduce any new technology without fully having tested the new product. It is the same concept as with new medicine," Mr Singh said.

He said private and public sectors, including bodies like the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), had responsibility to ensure it was safe. "And only after they give a kind of rubber stamp, and they say `Yes, okay,' then governments can be recommended to take these seeds and distribute them to farmers," Mr Singh said.

Food for future But he said biotechnology offered the promise of helping food production keep up with population growth. "What technology can bring us is a further increase in production. We produce enough food today, but we may not produce enough in the future because the population is still growing. We have to look ahead in another 20 to 25 years," he said.

Mr Singh said the FAO wanted to promote traditional farming as well as encourage new technology and believed the two could live side by side. "It is not that we feel that every thing should go into the biotechnology or private sector. No, no, no. We are very much for a very balanced approach," Mr Singh said. The new technology could help improve the living conditions of farmers in Asia as their livelihood was very much linked to rice, said Mr Singh. A farmer on average spends one-third to half of the total cost of production on pesticides.

"With the new technology that can produce disease-resistant crops, that money will be saved, and their living conditions would be improved," Mr Singh added. Around 600 million tonne of paddy rice a year is produced globally, of which 540 million tonne is produced in Asia, according to FAO figures for 1999, the last year for which data is available. Rice is eaten by almost 3 billion people or roughly half the world's population.