A globally-recognized maize “success story” since the 1970s, Kenya’s first maize hybrid diffused faster than did hybrids in the U.S Corn Belt during the 1930s-1940s. Today, a hybrid released in 1986 still dominates on farms in Kenya, despite the dramatic increase in the number of hybrids,...

When farmers consume much of their grain output, end-use quality, in addition to standard production characteristics, affects farmers' seed choice and the economic returns to investment in crop breeding. Evidence from Malawi suggests that despite a lengthy research lag, emphasizing grain quality...

Underutilized plant species are defined as agricultural or non-timber forest species that are locally abundant in developing countries but globally rare. Scientific information about them is scant and their use is currently limited relative to their economic potential. Some are potentially...

On farm conservation of crop diversity entails policy challenges, especially when the diversity of crops maintained on farms has both inter-specific (among crops) and infra-specific (within a crop) components. Survey data is used to compare the determinants of inter- and infra-specific diversity...

The Punjab of India is an historical source of key wheat genetic resources in national and global plant breeding, and a focus of concerns about the abandonment of local varieties during the Green Revolution. Much of the wheat area in Punjab was already planted with earlier products of modern...