Demand led plant variety design for emerging markets in Africa

African agriculture is moving from subsistence to market led systems, as small scale producers generate surpluses to sell in local, regional and/or international markets. Central to this transformation is identifying market demand and developing agricultural products with characteristics to meet this demand.

Market demand can originate from along the entire value chain from farmers to processors to consumers and new plant varieties need to be developed and adopted that meet market needs. The uptake of new varieties from breeding programs in Africa is however low; less than 35% uptake in Africa compared to 60% uptake in Asia and 80% in South America.

Today, public plant breeding R&D often fails to create impact at scale. Private companies know the value of demand-led R&D and are often in a better position to link market demand with breeding needs. The goal of this project is to enable smallholder farmers to better participate in local and regional markets, by increasing the availability and adoption of high performing plant varieties that meet market demands. The project aims to: develop, disseminate and communicate a set of new decision support tools to support plant variety design; and encourage market-led approaches that contribute towards setting targets within crop improvement programs, especially in Africa. The project ultimately aims to encourage public breeding programs to benefit from their experiences and expertise of the private sector.

This innovative project is a partnership between the Food Security Centre, Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture and The Crawford Fund. The project is being led by the University of Queensland Global Change Institute (UQ/GCI).