Like any other product, new crop varieties only get used if they meet a need. The Demand-Led Breeding (DLB) program has helped African breeders better understand and focus on their farmers’ and market demands. Leading African educators and plant breeders are championing DLB. This is stimulating a new era of demand-led, entrepreneurial breeding.
A 2013 study commissioned by the CGIAR Impact Assessment team, showed that in sub-Saharan Africa, farmers were only planting modern varieties on one-third of the crop area, based on new varieties released for 15 crops in 30 countries, over 10 years[1]. One factor in this limited adoption of new varieties lay in plant breeding: Scientists were not developing varieties that met consumers’ – and therefore farmers’ – demands and preferences.
This hypothesis was the starting point for a major 8-year program: Demand-led plant variety design for emerging markets in Africa. Funding and technical support came from Food Security Alliance, formed between the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), The Crawford Fund,and our Foundation. The program is managed by the University of Queensland for the three sponsors. The DLB program focused on three areas of: plant variety design; education and professional development; and policy and advocacy.
In the first phase (2014-2018) African and international partners co-created DLB. Some 26 DLB education workshops were held for early and mid-career breeders. These workshops were convened by leading African universities and regional entities, notably the African Centre for Crop Improvement Centre (ACCI), University of KwaZulu Natal; the West Africa Centre for Crop Improvement (WACCI), University of Ghana; PABRA (Pan-Africa Bean Research Alliance /CIAT Africa); and Biosciences eastern and central Africa (BecA)-ILRI Hub in Nairobi. Both WACCI, and PABRA are recent winners of the Africa Food Prize, in 2022 and 2023 respectively. An inclusive approach to the DLB workshops welcomed breeders from any country, and any national, regional, or international research center in Africa who were working on any food or fodder crop.
More than 600 African breeders have participated in DLB education and professional development events and are part of the DLB Community of Practice, led by the DLB Pan Africa Coordinator based in Nairobi.DLB has now published nine DLB educational modules, a textbook on “The Business of Plant Breeding”, a suite of over 20 product profiles and several policy briefs, all of which are available at: www.demandledbreeding.org[2].
Phase II (2019-2023) has focused on implementation of DLB within existing breeding programmes in NARs, universities and some CGIAR centres. Beans in Eastern and Southern Africa and tomato in West Africa were used as test value chains to help reshape the organization of breeding programs to meet market demands. A recent DLB module on the importance of Gender and Inclusivity is also part of the education resources available to help breeders target women’s needs better[3]. Routinely, Universities in South Africa, Ghana, Ethiopia, and Kenya include DLB principles as part of their postgraduate training programmes. University of Nairobi has DLB as an official part of their PhD curriculum.
Another major achievement has been DLB’s pioneering work in introducing the concept and practice of Product profiles.In 2015 DLB was the first programme in Africa to advocate for product profiling to be used as a critical design tool to drive the goals of breeding programmes, and this approach is now being widely adopted across many crops. More than 20 product profiles that describe each variety’s desired characteristics have been created across 11 crops. There are early success stories of new variety development in beans, tomatoes, and sorghum, where the application of DLB principles in NARS breeding programs has led to new registered varieties that are being adopted by farmers.
Work in the policy and advocacy stream has focused on winning support from policy makers for institutional change in public breeding institutes in Ethiopia, Ghana, and South Africa. In Ghana, the government has invested $1 million to improve the seed system for tomato varieties bred at WACCI in Accra*. Ethiopia has adopted DLB in national breeding programs for sorghum and several other priority crops, under the leadership of the Ethiopian National Variety Release Committee. The DLB program is also exploring innovative funding mechanisms to enable more sustainable support for new variety development. The aim is to demonstrate, with evidence of success, that future funding of plant breeding is an investment that will lead to increasing agricultural productivity and profitability rather than being a cost to the public purse.
[1] Walker, T. and Alwang, J. (eds) (2015) Crop improvement, adoption and impact of improved varieties in food crops in Sub-Saharan Africa. CGIAR, Montpellier, France and CAB International, Wallingford, UK. pp480.
An external review of the program was commissioned by ACIAR in late 2023. The review team met with a range of DLB partners during a Pan African workshop of some 30 African breeders and international partners in Nairobi in November 2023.The external review team rated the DLB program as outstanding. The reviewers noted that the programme has achieved its original objectives for introducing a more demand led approach to plant breeding in Africa, and exceeded expectations in terms of the extent to which the DLB concepts are now widely known and are being implemented in countries, crops and institutions across Africa. The review team strongly recommended that the DLB program should continue into a new phase in 2024. Current and potential new African education and research institutes strongly endorsed and are pursuing this recommendation.
An important success factor for DLB has been the vision, leadership and championing for change by African leaders from across West, Eastern and Southern Africa.
Viv Anthony, SFSA’s DLB lead.
Dr Nasser Yao, DLB’s Pan-African Coordinator in Nairobi, Kenya highlights “DLB’s Community of Practice, networking and collaborative spirit have been key so far to stimulating change and creating successful demanded varieties”.
Looking ahead, Tony Gathungu, SFSA’s Head of Seed2B Africa adds “Breeding takes time. We are now seeing high performing new varieties from the DLB pipeline coming down the track. These need support to be scaled to reach smallholder farmers”. “The full benefits from the long-term investment in DLB programme will be self-evident as these new varieties prove their potential in farmer’s hands”.
Future directions
In the light of the consultations at the DLB workshop in late 2023 and the external review recommendations, Gabrielle Persley, Chief Investigator for the DLB program at the University of Queensland, noted that “The future directions of the DLB program will focus on the scaling up and scaling out of demand led breeding by working with more countries, on more crops, and with more institutionswithin each country. The DLB team will continue to emphasise working with NARS and universities, and with the private sector, especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the seed sector. Three key themes identified at the Nairobi workshop are being pursued by the DLB team in Africa for 2024 and beyond, on:
Theme 1: Right Products – Right Varieties - Right Places – an expanded range of crops and countries, with sorghum and grain legumes identified as additional DLB focus crops.
Theme 2: Education, Professional Development, Policy, and Advocacy, including creating a new African Fellowships and Small Grants fund to support breeders within NARS and universities.
Theme 3: Access to Enabling Technologies, to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of new variety development and dissemination through high-quality seed, with both aspects based on demand-led principles.
DLB is an Africa-led initiative and you can find the latest information about it at www.demandledbreeding.org. For additional details, please reach out to Dr. Nasser Yao, the Pan-Africa DLB coordinator, located at ILRI in Nairobi.
