Assessment of breeding programs

Breeder seed production and assessment of breeding programs' capacity-building needs in targeted African countries

Research/project objective(s)

The main objectives are to produce sufficient breeder and foundation seed of improved varieties for use in seed systems partnerships, and to collectively assess and prioritize needs to enhance each national peanut breeding program in the target countries for the Peanut Innovation Lab.

Relation to the overall mission of the Peanut Innovation Lab

Strengthening national breeding programs and enhancing seed production of improved varieties are priorities of the Peanut Lab. These form the basis of research projects focused on developing new varieties and providing good quality seed of these varieties to the seed producers (private and farmer organization) and ultimately to the farmers.

Rationale for including this activity as an initial activity

The proposed partnership with the Syngenta Foundation’s Seeds2B program has identified that one limiting factor in conducting extensive in-country on-farm varietal demonstration trials is the availability of high-quality seed. Thus, it is critical that the programs be provided resources to produce sufficient early generation seed of the key/flagship varieties as early as possible.

Establishing the priority needs for each breeding program will allow many of the competitive projects to address these in their proposed capacity building efforts. The Peanut Lab ME will also be able to better target competitive and commissioned capacity building efforts and will be able to discuss with local USAID missions and other donors regarding support for capacity building.

How research outputs will enhance the competitively awarded research activities

Competitively awarded research activities will have access to sufficient high-quality seed of improved flagship varieties and better-equipped research partners.