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Supplemental Material, sj-pdf-1-oag-10.1177_00307270211023058 for Are continued public sector and CGIAR investments on wheat crop improvement research justifiable? A Moroccan case by Yigezu A Yigezu, Tamer El-Shater, Zewdie Bishaw, Abdoul Aziz Niane, Mohamed Boughlala, Michael Baum and Ahmed Amri in Outlook on Agriculture

The adoption of new cultivars depends largely on the extent to which the breeding objectives set to identify the new cultivars align with the farmers' preferences. There is documented potential of improved cultivars to enhance productivity and income in the developing world, but their adoption among smallholders remains low. Here, we attempt to understand if in the case of Morocco the low level of adoption of new durum wheat (Triticum durum Desf.) cultivars can be partially explained by a misalignment of breeders objectives. Factorial analysis was applied to data obtained through a set of interviews with 90 wheat breeders from 49 countries and a case study of 861 durum wheat growers in Morocco, to reveal the existence of five breeders and four farmers classes based on relative importance assigned to five mega-traits: grain yield potential, yield stability, abiotic stress tolerance, biotic stress resistance, industrial quality, and household use. Weighted indexes were derived based on the average rate of preference shown by each interviewee belonging to that specific class, and hierarchically clustered to reveal poor matching between North African breeders and Moroccan farmers. Further, these indexes were applied to the actual performances of 23 durum wheat elite lines to reveal 71% to 87% matching. However, breeders' and farmers' classes had preferences for different genotypes. Together, these results indicate that a certain degree of misalignment exist between farmers and breeders' objectives, and that the use of participatory farmers-weighted indexes could help raise the level of adoption.

In the early 1980s, disease susceptibility in short-season lentil landraces began to limit productivity in areas where relay cropping took place in Bangladesh. Since then, several improved high-yielding lentil varieties, which are resistant to rust and blight and suitable in the relay cropping system, have been released jointly by national and international research centers. This study used three methods, namely a panel of experts, a survey of 1,000 households where the respondents named the variety they used, and DNA fingerprinting of seed samples collected from all lentil plots cultivated by survey households to estimate adoption. Double hurdle and instrumental variables regression methods were applied to the household survey and DNA fingerprinting data to identify determinants of adoption and measure their impacts. Of particular interest was whether estimates of adoption, determinants of adoption and impacts varied by method of variety identification. Results showed that the expert panel overestimated the adoption of more recent varieties while about 89 percent of the farmer-reported varieties were accurate, as verified by DNA fingerprinting. DNA fingerprinting appears to have little advantage for estimating the level of adoption in this case, where few varieties of lentils are found, local variety names do not exist, and most seed is obtained through a formal system. However, even under these conditions, determinants of adoption vary by identification method, and use of farmer-reported information on the variety can lead to erroneous conclusions about determinants of adoption. Because recent breeding efforts have focused on taste and cooking considerations, yield impacts were not significantly different from zero. Accepted version

This paper argues and provides empirical evidence that trade-offs and/or complementarities are inherent in technological options that shape the adoption of and land-use decisions in production systems involving multiple crops in Ethiopia. By applying a fractional response model to a nationally representative sample of 1 469 households, this paper found that, while there are tradeoffs in the land-use decisions regarding barley and potatoes, there are complementarities in the land-use decisions of their improved varieties. A striking result from this analysis is that the frequency of extension visits does not affect land allocation among crops and their improved varieties, which, in the light of the very high density of extension personnel in Ethiopia, shows the poor performance of the extension service delivery system. These results imply that the analysis of smallholder adoption decisions and agricultural technology targeting needs to consider all major crops in the farmers’ portfolio, and Ethiopia should consider overhauling its extension service delivery systems.

This paper argues and provides empirical evidence that adoption decisions on multiple technologies involve a series of three sequential sub-decisions. Using a multivariate tobit and multivariate probit models and a nationally representative data from Ethiopian highlands, we find that decisions on the area shares of barley and potatoes in total farm size and the plot/field-level decision on the adoption of improved varieties of the two crops are independent. The farm-level decisions on the adoption of improved varieties of the two crops however exhibit strong simultaneity. A striking result from this analysis is that, the number of extension visits affects neither crop choice nor variety adoption decisions which, along with the relatively high density of extension agents in Ethiopia, shows the poor performance of the extension system. Targeting farmers dedicating higher proportion of their lands to the particular crop and introducing other models of extension could increase technology adoption.

Replaced with a revised version of the paper 12/09/09.