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Identifying Farmers’ Preferences for New Maize Varieties in Eastern Africa

By: Contributor(s): Material type: TextTextLanguage: English Publication details: Mexico, DF (Mexico) : CIMMYT, 2002.Description: p. 82-103ISBN:
  • 970-648-096-X
Subject(s): In: Quantitative Analysis of Data from Participatory Methods in Plant Breeding p. 82-103Summary: To bridge the gap between breeders and farmers and to ensure that new varieties satisfy farmers' preferences and suit their socioeconomic situations, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) is developing and adapting participatory methods for identifying farmers' maize variety preferences in East Africa. Several methods are being used: breeding on-station under stress conditions (simulating farmers' conditions); participatory rural appraisals; farmers' evaluation of new varieties on-station; and mother and baby trials. The latter is a new approach consisting of a central researcher-managed "mother" trial comprising all tested varieties, and satellite or "baby" trials, which are farmer managed and test a subset of varieties from the mother trial. The results show that farmers are eager to participate in selecting new varieties but their selection is very different from that of breeders. Moreover, farmers' evaluations and testing on-farm both show very high variance. The methodology used in the study to identify farmers' criteria and to facilitate farmer evaluation of the varieties was very convenient for data co/lection but not for data analysis. For future trials, sufficient resources need to be made available to assure enough high quality data for statistical analysis. These data will make it possible to adjust the breeders' index in arder to make it more responsive to farmers' preferences.
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Book part CIMMYT Knowledge Center: John Woolston Library CIMMYT Staff Publications Collection CIS-3518 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) 1 Available 631791
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To bridge the gap between breeders and farmers and to ensure that new varieties satisfy farmers' preferences and suit their socioeconomic situations, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) is developing and adapting participatory methods for identifying farmers' maize variety preferences in East Africa. Several methods are being used: breeding on-station under stress conditions (simulating farmers' conditions); participatory rural appraisals; farmers' evaluation of new varieties on-station; and mother and baby trials. The latter is a new approach consisting of a central researcher-managed "mother" trial comprising all tested varieties, and satellite or "baby" trials, which are farmer managed and test a subset of varieties from the mother trial. The results show that farmers are eager to participate in selecting new varieties but their selection is very different from that of breeders. Moreover, farmers' evaluations and testing on-farm both show very high variance. The methodology used in the study to identify farmers' criteria and to facilitate farmer evaluation of the varieties was very convenient for data co/lection but not for data analysis. For future trials, sufficient resources need to be made available to assure enough high quality data for statistical analysis. These data will make it possible to adjust the breeders' index in arder to make it more responsive to farmers' preferences.

Global Maize Program|Socioeconomics Program

Text in English

0301|AGRIS 0301|AL-Economics Program|R03CIMPU

INT2512|CFDE01

CIMMYT Staff Publications Collection

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