product profiles
New approaches to breed more inclusive crop varieties
More impactful crop varieties can be designed using gender-responsive tools and data that reveal the needs of different users in the value chain, including women farmers, consumers and food processors.
Plant breeders could let women farmers guide them
Plant breeders produce new varieties for their customers: farmers. To predict what kinds of new varieties are likely to offer significant benefits to farmers, breeders may turn to their customers to evaluate which characteristics might make a new variety more acceptable.
Dawn of a pan-African method for designing varieties with impact
Market and crop development specialists in Africa are making important steps towards embedding customer- and product-driven breeding practices in the region in 2020.
One the chief obstacles to agricultural development in Africa is the low rate at which farmers adopt improved varieties with the potential to improve livelihoods, resilience, food security and better nutrition.
Breeding for better gender equity
A pilot study to validate tools that will help breeders to pay more attention to gender is about to be launched with two breeding programs in Nigeria and Kenya.
EiB Annual Meeting 2019 Highlights
A common vision for CGIAR breeding backed by funders, with a view to One CGIAR
At its 2019 annual meeting, the CGIAR Excellence in Breeding Platform outlined an ambitious vision for breeding program modernization designed to deliver on the two key metrics demanded by the donors behind Crops to End Hunger: greater rates of variety turnover and genetic gain in farmers’ fields.
How much does it cost to develop and deliver improved maize varieties in Africa?
By Jerome Bossuet
From 10-12 September, members of the Global Maize Program at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) team met with breeders, seed system specialists, research associates, technicians and enabling technology leads from Kenya and Zimbabwe for a costing workshop.
EiB Product Manager Tawanda Mashonganyika unites crop breeders and market experts for more impactful varieties
The low rate at which farmers adopt improved varieties is one of the biggest obstacles to overcoming food insecurity. The average maize variety grown by farmers in sub-Saharan Africa is 15 years old, even though maize breeders have been releasing more than 50 new varieties every year.
Groundnut breeders in Malawi learn how to link product profiles and genotyping for faster variety turnover
A rich source of protein, oils and other nutrients that requires few inputs to produce, groundnut is considered both an important contributor to household nutrition and a cash crop. To accelerate the development and adoption of improved varieties, a workshop on the use of product profiles low-cost genotyping was held for groundnut breeders in Malawi.
Groundnut breeders in Malawi learn how to link product profiles and genotyping for faster variety turnover
A rich source of protein, oils and other nutrients that requires few inputs to produce, groundnut is considered both an important contributor to household nutrition and a cash crop. To accelerate the development and adoption of improved varieties, a workshop on the use of product profiles low-cost genotyping was held for groundnut breeders in Malawi.
Product profiles are a blueprint for breeding with impact
The impact of breeding on poverty alleviation in the developing world has been limited by low rates of adoption in farmers’ fields. With the number of people going hungry in the world again on the rise we must recommit to science for impact.
Product Profiles were designed by breeders for breeders as a means to focus their activities on the development of products that will replace established varieties on the market, taking into account market knowledge and other considerations such as gender.
Continuous improvement for breeding with impact
We all feel that we improve as time goes on. Lessons are learned, new tools incorporated, and different initiatives occur here and there. But even with hard work and dedication this is not enough to create the step changes in variety turnover and genetic gain increases we want to see in farmers' fields.