To increase the range of maize, legume and fodder/forage varieties available to smallholder farmers
The third objective was to contribute to the development of functional seed systems for sustainable delivery of high-yielding, drought tolerant legume and maize varieties compatible with Conservation Agriculture-based farming.
Stress tolerant maize varieties, higher yielding legume varieties and fodder/forage species/varieties available to farmers in the selected farming systems.
Newly released maize hybrids and OPVs and legume species/varieties with potential suitability for the targeted farming system were selected based on past regional and national trial data. Best-bet varieties with adequate amounts of seed were utilized for experimentation in Objective 2 (Adaptive Agronomy Research) whereas a wider range of varieties were assessed for performance under Conservation Agriculture, farmer preference and marketability in collaboration with farmers in the selected communities. Farmer access to promising but underinvested material (maize hybrids and OPVs, grain legume and forage/fodder species and varieties) was enhanced through seed increase at relevant stage of seed production pipeline.
Seed availability bottlenecks of improved maize, legume forage/fodder varieties (from sister projects such as DTMA and TL-II) was identified and tackled, including seed systems support. Based on GxE analyses and socio-economic characterizations, recommendation domains for varieties and hybrids were developed both within each country and across the region to support rapid scale-out. Associated training was executed in Objective 5 (Capacity Development).