Adoption of improved grains legumes and dryland cereals crop varieties: A synthesis of evidence

Abstract

Like other crop improvement programs, a key prerequisite for the CGIAR Research Program on Grain Legumes and Dryland Cereals (CRP GLDC) to generate large-scale impact is large-scale adoption. Hence, evidencing the breadth and depth of such adoption is both of intrinsic interest and important for estimating downstream impacts, such as improved food and nutritional security, income, resilience, and soil health. While various GLDC adoption studies have been undertaken, a recent effort to systematically review these studies and synthesize the results is lacking. We undertook such a review, identifying 69 studies and 35 independent country crop combinations (CCCs). To generate aggregated and updated estimates of GLDC improved varietal adoption, we devised and applied a procedure to estimate national cropping areas under such varieties and, in turn, the number of adopting households. Estimates derived from household surveys and expert opinion solicitation are treated with higher and lower levels of confidence, respectively. As of 2019, we estimate from higher confidence studies that improved GLDC crops were cultivated on 15.37 million hectares of land by 17.64 million households in CRP GLDC’s 13 priority countries. With the inclusion of lower confidence studies, these numbers increase to 32 and 44.64 million, respectively. We are further confident that the program exceeded its adoption target of 8.9 million newly adopting households from 2011, particularly when likely spillovers vis-à-vis non-surveyed areas, non-priority countries, and non-priority crops in priority countries are considered.