Sorghum Technology Adoption Using the Innovation Platform

Abstract

Since the establishment of the Zambia Agriculture Research Institute (ZARI) in 1953 formerly called Soils and Crops Research Branch (SCRB), the Sorghum and Millets Improvement Programme (SMIP) at ZARI has been utilizing conventional breeding methodologies to disseminate agricultural technologies. The introduction of the Cytoplasmic Male Sterility (CMS) in the early 80s as a way to accelerate seed production of new plant varieties was full of optimism. When the CMS system was first introduced, hopes were very high for rapid progress in hybrid seed production and so were the hopes for high technology adoption rates of new varieties. However, despite the breeding efforts, the adoption rates of new plant varieties have been modest especially for hybrids. Some of the failures have been attributed to the top down approach, where the development of a variety starts with a breeder and then ends up in the hands of a farmer. In certain instances this methodology has worked perfectly as is the case for maize, if supported by the policy frame works. In order to encourage utilisation of proven technologies from agricultural research, innovative methods have had to be adopted since 2007 using a concept called Participatory Pre-Breeding and Variety Selection. This is a borrowed concept from social scientists on participatory rural appraisal to bring about rural agriculture development. The idea behind this was to improve agriculture production and productivity by increasing the adoption rates of technologies for underutilised crops that are otherwise important for climate change adaptation and food security. This was done by evolving major stakeholders in the developmental and dissemination process. The selection process of promising varieties started in farmers’ fields, if at all they saw the need for the technology. Sometimes the technology adoption process was driven by the demand for a particular variety of sorghum by companies requiring malting. This way, farmers had an incentive to adopt a variety easily because there was a market for it. This process was then facilitated by all stakeholders to make sure that is the technologies desired on the market or by the farmers were delivered. This approach lead to the release of a red sorghum variety (ZSV-36R) that was otherwise underutilised before this approach was implemented.