LONDON (Reuters) - The British government will give German chemicals group BASF permission on Friday for the first trials of genetically modified crops since 2003, the Financial Times reported.

The company would be allowed to conduct two trials to produce genetically modified (GMO) potatoes, the newspaper said, without citing sources.

The GMO potatoes were likely to be planted from April next year on two plots of land, one hectare each, in Cambridgeshire and Derbyshire, in central England, according to the FT.

A comment was not immediately available from BASF or the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs.

Anti-GMO campaigners were unhappy at the idea of new trials for genetically modified crops, the newspaper said.

"These GM trials pose a significant contamination threat to future potato crops," Clare Oxborrow of Friends of the Earth was quoted in the FT as saying. "We don't need GM potatoes and there is no consumer demand for them."