There is emerging interest in the prospects for enhancing farmers' management of genetic resources as a complementary strategy to ex situ conservation. Using a framework that combines a characteristics model with the notion of impure public goods, we investigate farmers' incentives to grow the...

Identifying the appropriate germplasm to be improved is a key component of any participatory breeding effort because of its implications for impacts on social welfare and genetic diversity. This paper describes a method developed to select a subset of 17 populations for a participatory breeding...

Four environments with contrasting potential for agricultural productivity and infrastructure development were identified in Guanajuato State, Mexico, to test hypotheses about the relationship of maize biological diversity to the region's potential for agricultural productivity and...

This study uses an approach derived from models of the private and public characteristics of goods to illustrate (1) the overriding importance of variety attributes in farmers' decisions to allocate area among varieties of maize landraces and (2) the significance of farmers' perceptions of...

This paper presents an approach for assessing the effectiveness of projects aimed at creating incentives for smallholder farmers to continue maintaining crop diversity under evolution on their farms in relevant centers of genetic diversity—a process known as on-farm conservation. It is applied...