Farmer-driven assessment of climate-resilient crop varieties and downstream impacts for improved food systems in Madagascar and Togo

Based on experience in farmer participatory crop breeding and seed-delivery systems in Africa, this project will support national public crop-breeding teams to conduct crop-variety trials of a range of food crops on-station and on-farm, allowing for the best-suited crop varieties to be officially released for seed production and supply to farmers. It will also seek to determine, through socio-economic studies, which crops and crop-variety traits are most likely to deliver lasting benefits to women and men smallholder farmers and youth in rural communities. It will further measure the downstream impacts from the introduction of improved varieties into local farming systems.

The hypothesis is that properly introduced improved varieties will trigger a series of positive and sustainable changes in the existing farming systems. The project aims to both contribute to these changes and assess their trade-offs and implications at the socio-economic level among men and women farmers. The expected result of these activities is a scalable and replicable seed-system development model appropriate for meeting the needs of women and men farmers in Madagascar and Togo with strong buy-in from public institutions, farmers and the private sector.