LONDON, March 18 (Reuters) - Commodities assets under management rose to $255 billion in Febuary from $245 billion, reversing January's decline as investors remained positive about the asset class but began shifting away from long-only strategies, Barclays Capital said on Thursday. "Commodity investments have resumed in February, primarily from institutional investors employing commodity indices to gain broad based exposure, as retail investors still remain jittery," it said in a note. "In line with this pick up, commodity AUM increased by $10 billion month-on-month to $255bn, almost entirely reversing the fall seen in January. Of this $10 billion increase, only about $4 billion was in the form of fresh flows, and the rest down to price appreciation." Barclays said all sectors of commodities had received positive inflows in February, with energy leading at more than $2 billion, agriculture with $1.81 billion and base metals at $481 million. "Precious metals recorded inflows of just $251 million, in stark contrast to developments this time last year, where the phenomenal growth in commodity investments manifested itself through gold ETPs, which received over $6 billion worth of investments alone in February 2009." Below is a table of amounts by category Feb 2010 Jan 2010 ($billion) ($billion) Commodity AUMs 255.0 245.2 Commodity ETPs 88.6 87.2 Commodity Indices 110.1 102.0 Commodity Structured Products 56.5 56.0 (Reporting by Chris Baldwin, editing by Keiron Henderson)

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