Summons have been served

He is accusing ministers of delaying the release of information which could have prevented the seeds from being planted.

A Ministry of Agriculture spokesman said: "We will consider anything we receive from him when we receive it." Advanta refused to comment.

The latest batch of 25 sites across the UK form part of the government's three-year programme to test the effect of GM crops.

The Scottish Executive said applications were received from pharmaceutical and agricultural products firm Aventis for two trials in Daviot, in Aberdeenshire.

Extension 'irresponsible'

Trials have also been proposed at Rothienorman, also in Aberdeenshire, and at Munlochy, in the Black Isle.

One of the applications lodged for a trial in Daviot is at a farm which has already been conducting the first GM crop experimentation in Scotland, it is understood.

Friends of the Earth Scotland spokesman, Lang Banks, said: "Any plan to extend the trials in Scotland can only be irresponsible and will be gambling with our countryside.

"They have clearly shown that the separation distances are inadequate to prevent contamination and cross-pollination.

"To go ahead now will cause irreversible damage to our environment."

Robin Harper: "GM crops belong in the lab"

Green MSP Robin Harper said: "It is bizarre to say, 'let's see if there's any danger to the countryside by releasing GM crops into the countryside'.

"I'm asking the executive to use its powers to intervene on behalf of Scotland's environment and call a halt to this risky experiment.

"GM crops should be taken back to the lab where they belong."

However, Rural Affairs Minister, Ross Finnie, said public safety and environmental safeguards were of prime concern and all the applications would be rigorously scrutinised. He said: "Until the three-year evaluation programme has been completed there will be no commercial growing of GM crops in this country.

"We will use the results to satisfy ourselves that growing these crops will have no unacceptable effects on our environment."

Committee's criticism

But the Scottish National Party's environment spokesman Kenny MacAskill said he believed that no satisfactory assurances concerning the trials' environmental threat had been given.

He added: "The exclusion distances around fields are hopelessly inadequate, and the minister has done nothing to re-assure us that genetically modified pollen will not cross into neighbouring fields, with irreversible consequences."

Meanwhile, a cross-party committee of MPs has criticised the government's handling of recent GM contamination of conventional seeds and called for urgent action to restore confidence among farmers and the public.

The Commons agriculture select committee said procedures for dealing with such incidents would have to be rewritten.

And it said farmers urgently needed new guidance as they planned their planting of winter crops to avoid cross-pollination with non-GM crops.

Controversy flared in April after it emerged that conventional rape seed imported from Canada had been contaminated by GM crops which had been planted over 4km away.

In Britain, the current rule allows trials to be conducted just 200m from neighbouring fields.