A new legally binding international treaty will ensure access to plant genetic resources and related knowledge in an effort to tackle growing world hunger, according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO).

The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture was approved at last week's UN FAO conference by 116 votes, with two abstentions and none against.

The treaty aims to balance the needs of farmers and plant breeders with the objective of using plant genetic resources for sustainable food and agriculture production. It will take effect when ratified by at least 40 FAO member states.

It is the product of seven years' negotiation between member states and revises the 1983 International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture to create a legally binding agreement.

The newly-approved treaty follows in the spirit of this international undertaking, which had aimed "to ensure that plant genetic resources of economic and/or social interest, particularly for agriculture, will be explored, preserved, evaluated and made available for plant breeding and scientific purposes".

According to the FAO, 113 countries have adhered to the undertaking. An interim committee of 160 member countries, which make up the FAO commission on genetic resources for food and agriculture, will oversee the new international treaty until it comes into force.

However, the FAO does acknowledge technical, social, economic, political and ethical difficulties surrounding the objectives of the new treaty. "An enormous task still lies ahead to implement the provisions of the treaty, in particular in view of the need to ensure that the genetic resources and local technologies developed by generations of farmers are complemented and enhanced by the new genetic technologies, and not threatened or replaced by them," observed commission secretary José Esquinas-Alcázar.