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 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.
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.
As scientists and professionals, our instinct is to calculate and map out the way ahead, but science and technology is only the tip of the iceberg; lasting impact will come by first changing our behaviors, not the other way around.
In March 2019, EiB surveyed its members to identify the models of equipment currently used to digitize breeding operations.
These include package printers, label printers, barcode readers, electronic data collectors and seed counters that can be used to speed up, standardize and introduce efficiency savings into breeding program operations.
The survey results will be used to guide the outreach agenda of EiB module leaders, while the makes and models of equipment preferred by EiB users are available for reference on the EiB Toolbox.
Meat and dairy products are central to the Latin American diet, and livestock is a source of income for over 600 million people living on less than US $1 per day around the world. Historically, a lack of quality forage crops has restricted production and increased the environmental impact of livestock farming, with poor-quality grazing areas being created through deforestation.
In 2019, all CGIAR Centers are focused on taking breeding program impact to the next level.
CGIAR and public sector experts met at the International Potato Center (CIP, Peru) o evaluate genomics resource needs and demonstrate new tools and methods for polyploid crop breeding.
This article first appeared on CCAFS.cgiar.org, read it here.
Climate change requires that we breed crops and livestock better suited to new conditions.
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.
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.
Video: George Kotch, EiB product design and management lead, explains stage gates in five minutes.
High-performing breeding programs not only have a strong idea of customer needs, they also exercise full control of the breeding pipeline to ensure that the right products are delivered and adopted.
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.
Around 115 members of the CGIAR breeding community, plus others representing national programs, universities, funders and the private sector, met for a three-day discussion of how to co-develop the next generation of advanced breeding programs that will improve the rate at which resource-poor farmers are able to adopt improved varieties that meet their needs.
Photo: Attendees at the meeting (Sam Storr/CIMMYT)
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.
During 17-21 September, 22 members of the transformative rice breeding project at the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) received training in high-throughput genotypic selection and analysis as part of the collaboration between EiB and the High-Throughput Genotyping Project (HTGP).
Workshop hosted by IRRI with EiB and GOBII assesses breeding plan improvement and offers training, access to services.
A culture of continuous improvement will drive breeding technology adoption and higher rates of genetic gain.
Excellence in Breeding Platform partners join forces to obtain lower cost services.