In a discussion on the future of crop breeding at the Cereals seminar, experienced wheat breeder Bill Angus highlighted CIMMYT as a leading example of effective global crop breeding, particularly for regions with limited agricultural inputs. He emphasized that while the UK has a competitive wheat breeding environment, it could learn from CIMMYT’s approach, which successfully develops wheat varieties suited for the developing world, where farmers often lack the luxury of chemical inputs. Angus advocated for the UK to adopt a more impactful and globally engaged breeding strategy, drawing inspiration from CIMMYT’s successes.
With the ever-changing climate conditions, including the unpredictable El Niño, and dynamic changes in government policies, understanding farmers’ preferences and market segmentation has become crucial for implementing impactful breeding programs. Market segmentation is a strategic process which divides a market into distinct group of consumers with similar needs, preferences, and behaviors. This allows organizations to tailor their products and services to specific customer segments, thus ensuring maximum value and impact.
In today’s fast-paced and evolving agricultural landscape, market segmentation plays a vital role in helping organizations navigate the complexities of a dynamic market. CIMMYT’s maize breeding program has a successful track record in developing and delivering improved varieties that are climate-resilient, high-yielding and suited to the rainfed tropical conditions in Africa. To further strengthen the impact, it is important to have a clear understanding of the evolving needs of farmers in different agroecological regions and the emerging market scenario so that breeding processes can be tailored based on market needs and client requirements.
Questions arise on how to refine the breeding programs relative to country-specific market segments, what efforts are underway to target these markets, and how do these markets transition. Recognizing the importance of market segmentation in refining breeding programs at the country and regional levels, CIMMYT hosted two workshops on maize market intelligence in Kenya and Zimbabwe, under the CGIAR Market Intelligence Initiative for eastern and southern Africa.
“Market intelligence in breeding programs is critical to understand the evolving needs of key stakeholders, including farmers, consumers, and the seed industry. It helps continuously improve the breeding pipelines to develop and deliver impactful products in targeted market segments. The workshops brought together relevant experts from the national programs and seed companies for focused discussions to develop a harmonized breeding strategy. This would help to address the needs of smallholder maize farmers in eastern and southern Africa,” said Director of CIMMYT’s Global Maize program and One CGIAR Global Maize Breeding Lead, B.M. Prasanna.
B.M. Prasanna delivers a presentation. (Photo: CIMMYT)
The workshops constituted a strategic continuation of the Product Design Team (PDT) meetings under CGIAR Market Intelligence, with a focus on the refinement of gender-intentional target product profile design. Guided by the expertise of CIMMYT’s Global Maize program, Market Intelligence, and ABI-Maize Transform teams, the sessions saw active participation from key stakeholders including lead breeders, seed systems experts, and market specialists from the National Agricultural Research and Extension Systems (NARES), alongside collaborative engagement with seed company partners. The workshops underscored the commitment to incorporate diverse perspectives, aligning with the evolving maize market landscape in eastern and southern Africa.
“The workshop provided critical insights on opportunities to improve market penetration of improved maize varieties. There is a need to strike a balance between the needs of the farmers, seed industry, and consumers in variety development; actively involve farmers and consumers in variety selection and understanding their preferences; and focus on emerging needs of the market such as yellow maize for feed and food,” said James Karanja, maize breeding lead at the Kenya Agriculture & Livestock Research Organization, Kenya.
Insights from both workshops underscored the importance of providing breeders with pertinent information and comprehensive training. The discussions illustrated the necessity for breeders to define their objectives with a 360-degree outlook, aligning breeding programs with market segments and interfacing with CIMMYT’s regional vision.
Workshop participants. (Photo: CIMMYT)
“The market intelligence workshop is an excellent initiative for the breeding programs. It shows how traits can be identified and prioritized, based on farmers’ requirements. The maize value chain is broad, and the synergy between the developer of the product (breeder), the producer (farmer), and the consumer needs to be effective. Hence, streamlining of the market segments and eventually the target product profiles is key in ensuring that the breeders develop improved products/varieties with relevant traits that address the needs of farmers, consumers, and the seed industry,” said Lubasi Sinyinda, breeder from the Zambia Agricultural Research Institute, Zambia.
Another participant, Lucia Ndlala, a maize breeder at the Agricultural Research Council, South Africa, echoed similar enthusiasm. “The workshop was exceptionally informative, providing valuable insights into target product profiles and market segments. This knowledge will undoubtedly prove instrumental in shaping future breeding strategies,” she said.
When applied through a breeding lens, market segmentation is a vital tool in refining breeding programs at both country and regional levels, enabling breeders to better understand and address the diverse needs of the farmers, and ensuring that the improved varieties are tailored to market segments.
Seed the World Group hosted a webinar to find a common ground between public and private breeding programs in North America and some possible paths forward. Fernando Gonzalez, a retired plant breeder from CIMMYT mentioned a noticeable uptick in the involvement of the private sector in breeding programs in Mexico.
Learn more about the primary goals underlying public and private breeding efforts.
Crop breeding has the potential to significantly contribute to addressingthe global challenges of poverty, malnutrition, hunger, gender inequality, environmental degradation and climate change.Rapid population growth, climate change and market crises in low-income and middle-income countries mean that crop breeding must be far more agile and professional than ever before. Data-driven, modernized breeding with tools and technologies such as genomic selection, quantitative genetics, high-throughput phenotyping and bioinformatics, are needed toaccelerate and advance improvement in varieties.
Across the CGIAR-NARES(National Agricultural Research and Extension Systems) crop breeding networks, there is huge opportunity to reach the full potential to improve the lives of farmers and consumers: to share innovations to their full potential; reduce costs associated with services such as bioinformatics; de-fragment disparate data and incompatible technologies; apply consistent standards; and improve access to tools, technologies and shared services.
This Initiative aims to improve the genetic, economic, social and environmental performance of breeding programs across the CGIAR-NARES breeding network.
This objective will be achieved through:
Undertaking strategic modernization so that breeding schemes are designed using the most up-to-date methods, namely: quantitative genetics and computer simulation, including modeling of adoption and benefits across the breeding network, and budget forecasting for management of the portfolio and operational improvements.
Delivering cost-effective shared services through coordinating services such as genotyping and data management, leading to efficiency and greater bargaining power in purchasing or contracting equipment, software and services, ultimately enabling the generation and analysis of high-quality and consistent data across the breeding network.
Implementing performance management of consistent, connected operations through a dedicated performance management team supporting breeding programs and data management teams in describing, harmonizing and adopting standard operating protocols, workflow charts and quality controls across the networks.
Making smarter use of data, enabling CGIAR-NARES networks to share standardized data, creating larger and more powerful datasets that can be readily analyzed and interpreted.
Promoting innovation and research exchange through developing and implementing change management plans, and supporting region-specific capacity building to increase global adoption of modernized breeding tools, technologies and shared services across the network.
This Initiative will work with breeding programs serving countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, along with Asia and Latin America. High-priority countries for the Initiative include Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Zambia in Africa, and Bangladesh and India in South Asia.
Proposed 3-year outcomes include:
Varieties are developed 30% faster for 70% of targeted breeding programs.
Shared services reduce costs by 25% in a majority of target programs, making modernized breeding more accessible across the global CGIAR-NARES networks.
At least 70% of targeted breeding programs make data-driven decisions using genomic, phenotypic and environmental data at more than one major decision point.
At least a 70% improvement of Initiative’s targeted breeding programs in at least 50% of impact area tracking indicators as a result of CGIAR-NARES leadership.
Increased capacity in at least 15 NARES institutions, demonstrated by increased access to tools, technologies and shared services (of more than one type) more than once a year.
A least 70% of the Initiative’s targeted continuous breeding programs increase or add at least one target to their modernization plan.
Standardized protocols shared in a common system.
Harmonized operations enabling consistent data generation.
Adoption of quality management system within facilities.
Establishment of Breeding Pipeline Improvement Monitoring System to support informative performance monitoring that reduces the complexity of breeding activities to the core metrics material for decision-making, as aligned to shared goals.
Establishment of performance monitoring system to track implementation of standardized processes and quality of operations along with modernization progress and the impacts of the resulting breeding program.
