International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center

Conservation agriculture practices and labor productivity in maize production: Evidence from smallholders in Malawi and Zambia

This study estimates the relationship between adoption of CA practices and labor productivity in maize production among smallholder farmers in Malawi and Zambia, using data from 1,120 randomly sampled households and 4,311 plots. We define CA practice adoption as using minimum til...

Improving Selection Efficiency at the Head Rows Stage of Winter Wheat Breeding by Using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index

Visual selection in early stage of wheat breeding is usually implemented method. This study was conducted to compare breeders’ visual selection with normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) selection. Three different selection protocols were used at Head Rows (HR) stage: Bre...

Improving access to new technologies: An experiment with Kenyan input sellers

Abstract Agrodealers play a critical role in rural economies, selling essential inputs for agricultural production, stocking new products, and providing farmers with technical advice. However, uncertainty can discourage them from stocking newer, less familiar products, limiting t...

Estimating on-farm genotypic performance and variability using ranking data

Abstract Key message Our scalable two-step method estimates genotypic performance and genetic parameters from ranking data, producing reliable results comparable to quantitative analyses, enabling the integration of ranking data into breeding pipelines. Abstract Plant breeding re...