About this site

The term "agricultural biotechnology" covers a broad range of technologies that are being used to an increasing extent in crops, livestock, forestry, fisheries and aquaculture, and agro-industry. They are used for a number of different purposes, such as the genetic improvement of plants and animals to increase their yields or efficiency; characterization and conservation of genetic resources for food and agriculture; plant and animal disease diagnosis; vaccine development; and production of fermented foods.

Responding to the requests from its member countries, FAO has been at the forefront in recent years in providing high-quality, updated, science-based, neutral information on agricultural biotechnologies to its Members and their institutions. In doing so, one of its main instruments has been this FAO Biotechnology website, which was launched in 2000 in English and expanded in 2001 to include Arabic, Chinese, French and Spanish and in 2007 to include Russian.

The website provides an overview of FAO’s activities in agricultural biotechnologies, a synthesis of biotechnologies in the different sectors (agro-industry, crop, fisheries, forestry and livestock) and links to national biotechnology policy documents of FAO Members. It also contains a number of other key features, including the multilingual FAO Biotechnology Glossary; the FAO Statement on Biotechnology; the FAO Biotechnology Forum, which has hosted 19 moderated e-mail conferences since the year 2000; News and Events, focusing on the activities of FAO, other UN agencies/bodies and the 15 research centres of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR); links to FAO documents (articles, books, meeting reports, proceedings and studies) and press releases produced by FAO in recent years about agricultural biotechnologies.

A new version of this website was released in July 2011. For further information or to provide any comments on the new website, please contact us at [email protected].