BUENOS AIRES - Argentina, the world's No.2 corn exporter, approved on Monday a new genetically modified (GMO) corn made by Swiss firm Syngenta.

The variety, known as GA21, is resistant to the herbicide glyphosate, just like Roundup Ready corn developed by rival biotech giant Monsanto .

The government forecasts that farmers will seed between 3.0 million and 3.1 million hectares with corn this season, down from 3.32 million hectares in the 2004/05 crop year, mainly because GMO soybeans are cheaper and easier to grow.

But the government wants to encourage farmers to plant corn, which is crucial for replenishing soil nutrients.

"If through biotechnology we can achieve costs that are similar to soy's costs, this will generate sustainable crop rotations," Agriculture Secretary Miguel Campos told a news conference.

Because Argentina already approved Roundup Ready corn last year, the impact of this green light is not expected to be great.

But Campos said Argentine farmers choose among more than 148 variations of Roundup Ready soybeans, which revolutionized the farm sector after their introduction in 1996, indicating that there is a market for fine-tuned crop options. Still pending is approval of a Monsanto corn variety that combines Bt and Roundup Ready genes to resist both insects and glyphosate, which analysts expect to have greater impact since Bt corn is already seeded on about 60 percent of corn lands. A conflict between the government and Monsanto over GMO soybean royalties has cast doubt about when the government would approve this new variety.

Argentina is the world's No.2 producer of GMO crops behind the United States, with ten biotech crop varieties approved for seeding: one for soy, two for cotton and now seven for corn, according to biotech lobby ArgenBio.