Basic data on adoption of improved crop varieties should be collected on a regular and systematic basis and made widely available through integrated and easily accessible databases. This was one of the conclusions reached at the IAFP-SPIA meeting in Brasilia in November, 2008. If crop improvement research is considered the major success story, even today, it is essential to update the original Evenson and Gollin study.
Full text access for the original book edited by Evenson and Gollin is available here as a pdf, thanks to kind permission of the publishers CAB International. (Please note that this is for personal use only and should not be posted to any other websites.)
Impact Assessment Focal Points (IAFPs) at the CGIAR centers, SPIA members and other participants agreed that investing in surveys of varietal diffusion in several commodities, countries, and regions was necessary to supplement and validate national and sub-national expert opinion that was the basis for the earlier work.
There are three major components to this study, which is supported by a 3-year, $3m grant from the Gates Foundation, to Bioversity on behalf of SPIA and seven centres, approved in November 2009.
- To describe investments in and uptake of products of crop genetic improvement in priority country-by-commodity combinations in Sub-Saharan Africa
- To verify and gain a deeper understanding about the adoption and diffusion of new varieties in a nationally representative setting of selected priority countries and food crops in Sub-Saharan Africa
- To gain a more comprehensive understanding of the impact of crop improvement on poverty, nutrition, and food security
Click here (pdf) for a summary of the proposal to the Gates Foundation.
The project initiation meeting was held in Addis Ababa in January 2010, where agreement was reached on the priority areas for objectives (i) and (ii). Cick here (pdf) for an overview of the outcomes from the Addis meeting. On component (iii), the Project Steering Committee (PSC) for this study received in August 2010, eight concept notes from CGIAR Centers in collaboration with advanced research institutes (ARIs) following a call for proposals. The PSC will use evaluations by four peer reviewers to decide which concept notes should go forward to the full proposal stage.
First output:Paper presented at ASTI-FARA meetings in Dec 2011
