Abstract
Sustainability in agricultural development relies on continuing seed (cultivar) development and adoption. Measuring the contribution made by new seed cultivars to yield increases nationwide is essential, but this process remains challenging for academics. This study develops a method to estimate the overall contribution of new seed cultivars to crop yield increases by dividing the study period into several diffusion periods in terms of the replacement in major seed cultivars, and by defining a yield response model incorporating a series of dummy variables to capture net increases due to new cultivars’ diffusion in each period. According to this method, corn cultivars tested in the period from 1980 to 2013 in China can be divided into five periods. Significant increases in corn yields due to cultivar replacement were captured, and the contributions over the base period were calculated as 61.7%, 47.6%, 46.0%, and 48.9% for periods 2, 3, 4, and 5, respectively. Their respective contributions over the previous periods were therefore 61.7%, 34.6%, 26.7% and 56.7%. Estimation results indicate that the introduction of new corn seed cultivars significantly contributed to corn yield increase. This method is likely to have practical applications for other crops or livestock.
Highlights
Seed is the main input for crop production, and seed technology is the most important aspect of agricultural technology in terms of the sustainable development of agriculture [1]
He and He [11] used Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to analyse the contributory share of each factor affecting agricultural technological change in Youzhong County, and the results suggested that seed accounted for the largest share of total technological progress at 25.6%; Zhao and Zhang [1] employed AHP to evaluate the contribution for each specific factor affecting agricultural technological change in China, and they concluded that seed made the largest contribution among all technological aspects, with a share of 29.6% of the total contribution
This study developed a method to estimate the contribution of new seed cultivars to yield increases by constructing a yield response model in which a series of dummy variables were included to capture the contributions of various cultivar classes during their diffusion periods, defined by the replacement of major cultivars
Summary
Seed is the main input for crop production, and seed technology is the most important aspect of agricultural technology in terms of the sustainable development of agriculture [1]. Several studies have employed the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method to assess the contribution of seed in terms of agricultural technological change; this is an effective tool for dealing with complex assessments by reducing the complex factors to a series of pairwise comparisons and synthesizing the results on the basis of the relative pairwise evaluations (both qualitative and quantitative) made by decision makers [10]. A general assessment of seed contribution can be made using the AHP method, AHP requires analysts to set weighted values for each factor, and those values depend on the subjective judgements of the analysts, who may reach different conclusions. It is impossible for this method to generate objective results
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