Inn is a partner in the project Accelerated Varietal Improvement and Seed Delivery of Legumes and Cereals in Africa – AVISA (http://www.avisaproject.org) led by ICRISAT in partnership with the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT (https://alliancebioversityciat.org/).
Although significant adoption of improved seed varieties in the Global South has been reported, its overall use in smallholder farms remains low. The same issue is challenging also in Northern Europe. One constraint is the lack of variety recommendations that can be delivered to smallholder farms in challenging crop production environments, characterised by a diversity of environments and management practices. This issue is more acute across the Sub-Saharan Africa where farmers experience large yield gaps caused by climate change and/or the utilisation old varieties still available in the seed systems. A decentralised participatory approach following a citizen science philosophy, triadic comparison of technologies (tricot, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1813720116), has demonstrated the ability to help breeders in accelerate the selection of genotypes while addressing G x E x M interactions (genotype by environment by management) for tailored recommendations on crop variety management.
The work is done with CGIAR and the National Agricultural Research System (NARS) in Suh-Saharan Africa.
A PhD student and a Post-Doc from INN is involved in the project.
