The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center's (CIMMYT) experience with priority assessment and targeting has co-evolved with the advances across the international agricultural research system. A wide range of CIMMYT ex post assessments provide a valuable knowledge base of returns to past research which reduces the risks of poor research choices; but their value is increased by ex ante impact assessments. One milestone for the allocation of resources was the development of a Resource Allocation Tool (?RAT?), used at CIMMYT during its strategic planning in 2003/04. The RAT served as a starting point to address complex resource allocation questions in quantitative ways with hard data. These experiences with priority assessment and targeting approaches, methods, criteria and data were reviewed in a workshop at the CIMMYT headquarters in Mexico in August 2005. For the purposes of identifying optimal allocations of resources to maize and wheat research, by region, by discipline (e.g. genetic resources, breeding or agronomy) and by challenge/constraint (such as drought, biotic stress or value-added), a systematic step-wise process was outlined. This included the choice of criteria and methods depending on the specific demands, scope, level of aggregation and availability of resources.

Text in English