Abstracto

Review on Tracking Diffusion of Improved Crop Varieties with DNA Finger Printing

Efrem Asfaw Gutema*

Adoption studies of crop varieties are important to provide tangible evidence to return to the research and extension efforts in developing and extending the technologies to end users. Besides, reliable information on adoption of a certain technology would have a significant contribution for the improvement of its productivity and assist policy makers in making sound decisions for further improvement of the technology. However, getting accurate information on adoption and diffusion of the technologies is a challenge. Previous adoption studies of crop varieties were mainly focused on farmers’ recall which under estimate or overestimate the varietal level of adoption of the technology. On the other hand, recently, an advanced approach of tracking diffusion of crop varieties is emerged. DNA fingerprinting accurately identify crop varieties being cultivated by farmers and gives us known standard errors and bias of adoption. Policy makers easily utilize the information provided by DNA fingerprinting approach as compared to farmers’ recall method to further improve the efficiency of the crops.