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The article describes the efforts of a coalition of agricultural research centres, Seeds of Hope (SOH) in the rebuilding of Rwanda, after the genocide and war of 1994. Research involvement in emergency relief and rehabilitation was unusual at the time and SOH had to forge its unique complementary role. Focusing on crop and variety development and conservation it: provided technical advice to relief agencies on seed procurement; used its baseline ken to assess the effects of war on seed diversity and seed security; made preparations to restore specific germplasm (which, fortunately, proved unnecessary) and spent substantial effort on rebuilding human resource capacity in research as well as basic scientific facilities. The involvement of SOH highlighted the critical, yet very different, roles for research during emergency versus rehabilitation periods and demonstrated the cost effectiveness of building in a diagnostic component — before massive seed or germplasm distributions are programmed.

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This chapter has two contributions. The main one focuses on the application of farming systems research (FSR) to technology development. It looks at the history of on-farm experimentation (OFE) and reviews the evolution of concepts and methods on the "where, what, who and how" of OFE. It then goes on to assess the impact of FSR on the research process in three major research areas: varietal improvement, agronomy and natural resource management, and livestock. The second contribution is a case study of technology development in action, focusing on a Kenyan project seen as fairly typical of the way in which on-farm research has been implemented.