Browsing by Author "El-Shater, Tamer"

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    Institutional and farm-level challenges limiting the diffusion of new varieties from public and CGIAR centers: The case of wheat in Morocco
    Yigezu, Yigezu A.; Bishaw, Zewdie; Niane, Abdoul Aziz; Alwang, Jeffrey R.; El-Shater, Tamer; Boughlala, Mohamed; Aw-Hassan, Aden; Tadesse, Wuletaw; Bassi, Filippo M.; Amri, Ahmed; Baum, Michael (2021-07-06)
    Low adoption of agricultural technologies slows efforts to increase agricultural productivity and enhance rural livelihoods in developing countries. A large body of literature has sought explanations for the problem, but the focus has been mainly on micro-level farm and community factors affecting adoption. Institutional factors such as policies and market conditions, which are also important, have been largely overlooked and, few, if any, studies combine the two levels of analysis. We use Morocco as a case study to analyze institutional and farm-level factors affecting diffusion and adoption of improved wheat varieties. Results show both sides to be important. Institutional factors such as overly stringent variety testing procedures, imbalance of power among actors in the seed sector and ill-conceived variety licensing contracts limit access to seeds of more recently released varieties. Adoption of older new varieties is found to be affected by farm and farmer characteristics, but imperfect access to new seeds, sometimes associated with the failings identified above, is also a constraint. Findings signal the need for increased private engagement in seed multiplication; revised variety testing procedures; alternative royalty mechanisms; and enhanced linkages between public research and private seed companies.
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    Is DNA fingerprinting the gold standard for estimation of adoption and impacts of improved lentil varieties?
    Alwang, Jeffrey R.; Yigezu, Yigezu A.; Rahman, Wakilur; Mollah, M. Bazlur; El-Shater, Tamer; Aw-Hassan, Aden; Sarker, Ashutosh (2018-11-01)
    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.