Rome - The tropical root crop cassava could help protect the food and energy security of poor countries now threatened by soaring food and oil prices, a United Nations food agency said Friday.

The Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) was referring to an appeal by cassava scientists for greater investment in research and development to boost farmers' yields and explore industrial uses of cassava, including biofuel production.

The scientists meeting at a FAO-sponsored global conference held in Ghent, Belgium, said the world community could not continue to ignore the plight of low-income tropical countries that have been hardest hit by rising oil prices and galloping food price inflation.

Widely grown in tropical Africa, Asia and Latin America, cassava is the developing world's fourth most important crop, with production in 2006 estimated at 226 million tons.

It is the staple food of nearly a billion people in 105 countries, where the root provides as much as a third of daily calories.

Cassava has "enormous potential - at present, average cassava yields are barely 20 per cent of those obtained under optimum conditions," FAO said.

Cassava is also the cheapest known source of starch, and used in more than 300 industrial products with one "promising" application being the fermentation of the starch to produce ethanol used in biofuel, it added.

However, the FAO warned that policies encouraging a shift to biofuel production should carefully consider its effects on food production and food security.

Despite growing demand and its production potential, however, cassava remains an "orphan crop" because it is grown mainly in areas that have little or no access to improved varieties, fertilizer and other production inputs, FAO said.

Moreover, small scale farmers involved in cassava production are often cut off from marketing channels and agro-processing industries, FAO said. (dpa)