A group of 10 universities are launching a campaign to crack down on the licenses that public-sector researchers give crop biotechnology giants such as DuPont Co. and Monsanto Co. to use their patented genes and transplant techniques.

The initiative, outlined in a policy-forum column in Friday's edition of Science magazine (www.sciencemag.org), reflects a growing concern among university scientists that they are losing control of the biotechnology they need to help small farmers here and abroad grow better plants. The column is signed by the presidents of the University of California in Oakland, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., and Michigan State University in East Lansing, among others.

"We need to protect the public sector's traditional role of supplying new crops to [poor] farmers," said Gary Toenniessen, director of food security at the Rockefeller Foundation, which is spearheading the initiative.

The organizers said they are forming a group called the Public Sector Intellectual Property Resource for Agriculture, which will lobby university administrators to retain more rights for academics when they issue commercial licenses. The group said it also wants universities to better share their crop biotechnology patents with each other. Finally, the group is creating an intellectual-property database to help public-sector researchers figure out whether commercial licenses stand in their way.

The initiative is so new that it isn't clear whether companies will have a harder time getting access to university-patented technology. Officials of the U.S. crop biotechnology industry, which is anxious to win public support, praised the initiative Thursday. "We look forward to a continuation of the biotechnology that would be developed collaboratively between public and private sectors," said Lori Fisher, a spokeswoman for Monsanto, St. Louis.

America's land-grant universities have long focused on improving the smaller crops that the nation's big seed-breeding companies largely ignore, such as rice, apples, and strawberries, as well as many staple crops in the developing world. Academic researchers pioneered and patented many of the gene-transplant techniques that made crop biotechnology possible in the 1980s. About a quarter of crop biotechnology patents are based on public-sector inventions, according to the group.

Several universities chose to cash in on their patents by granting sweeping and exclusive licenses to companies interested in genetically modifying big money crops such as corn and soybeans, not realizing that the licenses would eventually put strict conditions on their own researchers' access to biotechnology. The scientists who are organizing a humanitarian project to genetically engineer rice to make vitamin A -- so-called Golden Rice -- had to deal with more than 40 patents and contracts.

Scientists at Cornell, for example, famously invented one of the most-common techniques to transplant genes into plants: a gene gun that uses compressed air to shoot genes into germplasm. Cornell sold most of the rights to the gene gun in 1989 to DuPont, the Wilmington, Del., chemicals maker, which greatly expanded its crop biotechnology business in the 1990s.

According to Ronnie Coffman, chairman of Cornell's plant-breeding department, many of the scientists who use the gene gun in their projects must now get DuPont's permission before commercializing their inventions. "We should have retained a lot more rights to the gene gun," said Dr. Coffman. Cornell, which collects royalty payments from DuPont, retains the rights to use the gene gun on ornamental plants and some fruits.

Likewise, David Douches, a Michigan State University professor, is trying to genetically engineer a better potato for making French fries and potato chips. But the university licensed a crucial starch gene to Monsanto, which has since largely shelved its work on genetically engineering spuds for the U.S. market. Nonetheless, Prof. Douches says he will need Monsanto's permission to commercialize his invention.

"It's difficult because a lot of intellectual property is tied up by Monsanto," said Prof. Douches.