The outline of an international agreement on access to the world's public seed banks - seen as crucial to future global food security - was provisionally agreed on Sunday by a commission of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation.

Delegates at the talks in Rome agreed on the basis of a multilateral system to give plant breeders and biotechnology companies access to the genetic resources contained in the seed banks. Such a system is widely agreed to be essential if research is to be carried out into new crops capable of meeting the challenges of world population growth and global warming.

However, the talks remain deadlocked over other issues that threaten the effectiveness of any agreement. Most important are concerns over the intellectual property rights regime allowing companies to protect new crop varieties.

Concern over this issue - and over whether the World Trade Organisation's regime on trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights, known as Trips, takes precedent over any FAO agreement - has caused several developing countries to restrict the number of crops the proposed multilateral system will apply to.

Only 35 crops have been included so far, with crops such as soya and ground nut excluded. Many delegates - particularly from European Union countries - believe the multilateral system would have little practical value unless the list was extended greatly.

Cary Fowler of the Washington-based Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, which operates the world's leading international seed banks, welcomed the agreement but expressed dismay that some developing countries were excluding their crops from the list. "This risks sending the signal that these crops are not important to global food security," he said.

The outstanding issues will be discussed next at the full FAO conference, to be held in Rome this November. Part of the conference will be the World Food Summit, expected to be attended by leading heads of state. The seed bank talks are expected to be a big issue.

The provisional agreement averted the prospect of the US and Australia being excluded from a multilateral system when the US dropped its opposition to mandatory royalties being paid to developing countries and instead proposed a mandatory system based on commercial contracts. The US had been concerned a mandatory royalty system could breach the Trips agreement.

However, the issue of intellectual property rights will continue to dominate the outcome of the talks. Jan Borring, the Norwegian delegate, said: "If we don't resolve the IPR issues and extend the list of crops there will be no agreement."

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