Presented by Glenn Hyman (CIAT) at the CGIAR-CSI Annual Meeting 2009: Mapping Our Future. March 31 - April 4, 2009, ILRI Campus, Nairobi, Kenya

2. Trial Sites
 Cultivar testing is a key element in the process of
delivering varieties to farmers
 Multi Environment Trials (MET) and GxE analysis
have a rich history going back 100+ years
 Trial networks for the cereal crops have been
especially effective in the past

3. Trends in MET’s
 RENACO [West and Central African Cowpea Research
Network], disappeared about 10 years ago when USAID
money stopped flowing
 IBYAN (International Bean Yield Assessment Network) ended
in 1996 for lack of funds
 In the 70’s germplasm was novel, more material out there
today
 Greater quarantine restriction today
 Growth of profit-oriented research groups, especially in Asia
and LAC
 weakening of NARS and IARCs?

4. “The poor performance of public institutions in
disseminating improved varieties to small-scale
farmers is broadly accepted, and there is an urgent
need to design and test new institutional
arrangements …..”
World Bank Development Report 2007

5. Changes since heyday of MET’s
 Changes in computing mean better data
management today
 Computational Biology: Advances in bioinformatics
can link site phenotyping to molecular breeding
platforms
 Computational Geography:
Geographic information
science and technology
 The Internet
 Web 2.0

6. Proposed Pilot Project:
Africa Trial Sites Catalogue - Reaching out to farmers, agronomists and
plant breeders with spatially efficient, participatory testing networks
A catalogue of trial
sites, managed and
maintained by
network community:
Melkassa, Ethiopia
site

8. CIMMYT maize
^

9. CIAT bean
#
CIMMYT maize
^

10. IITA cowpea
!
CIAT bean
#
CIMMYT maize
^

11. Tropical Legumes I
quot;
IITA cowpea
!
CIAT bean
#
CIMMYT maize
^

12. GCP Pheno Network
+
$
Tropical Legumes I
quot;
IITA cowpea
!
CIAT bean
#
CIMMYT maize
^

15. Links to searching for cultivars,
ordering seeds or nursery collections
IITA

16. Methods for designing field trials

17. Links to tools for trial management: developed in
conjunction with Generation Challenge Program

18. Tools to report
trial results
online

19. Information on the performance of
varieties is rarely online
25%
Y ie ld in c r e a s e o v e r c h e c k s
*** ***
20%
+ ***
15%
***
10%
*** ***
* * +
5%
0%
0 -1 1 -2 2 -3 3 -4 4 -5 5 -6 6 -7 7 -8 8 -9 >9
14.0
Av e r a g e tr ia l yie ld (t/h a )
12.0
Yield of thr variety (t/ha)
Trial #: 18 41 38 48 31 27 21 22 20 7
10.0
8.0
6.0
4.0
2.0
0.0
0.0 2.0 4.0 6.0 8.0 10.0
Yield of the trial (t/ha)
Experimental Checks

20. Web 2.0 tools to increase velocity of
communications
.
A combination of geospatial, social-networking and e-commerce ICT tools can
quickly and cheaply address the need to accelerate technology transfer and
remove bottlenecks

21. User Rankings for Varieties
maize
maize

22. Adoption of high-yielding and problem-
resistant varieties is low in Africa compared to
other regions
Courtesy of Stanley Wood, IFPRI

23. Partners in pilot initiative
 Generation Challenge Program
 IITA
 CIAT
 ICRISAT
 CIMMYT
 AG COMMONS
 IFPRI
 HarvestChoice
 CGIAR ICT-KM