A new fund could help secure the future of crucial genetic information contained in the world's major food crop seeds, delegates at the World Food Summit in Rome heard this week.

The money is being set aside to support the world's edible-crop gene banks - essentially deep freezes filled with seeds - "in perpetuity". The funds should also help to ensure that plant breeders have unrestricted access to seeds anywhere in the world.

http://www.nature.com/nsu/020603/020603-20.html

http://www.nature.com/nsu/020603/images/rice_160.jpg

This would be good, because it would help future colonists of other planets genetically modify plants to survive in thier new environment(if the eco-freaks decide that colonizing another world doesn't destroy its ecology).

Sounds to me like they are concerned with the idea of GM plants getting away from control and "contaminating the world".