Adoption of improved cassava varieties in Nigeria: Insights from DNA fingerprinting versus self-reporting varietal identification approaches

Abstract

Much of the empirical studies on crop varietal adoption in Sub-Saharan Africa relied on self-reported adoption in farm-household surveys, which is prone to measurement errors. In addition, farmers’ perceptions of consumption-related varietal traits in adoption studies has received limited attention compared with production-related traits. Using DNA-based and self-reported adoption measures, we analyze the adoption of improved cassava varieties (ICVs) with a focus on the extent of varietal misidentification, the sensitivity of the drivers of adoption to varietal misidentification and the role of farmers’ perceptions of biofortification trait in adoption decisions. We find that the adoption rate of ICVs is relatively high using both DNA-based and self-reported adoption measures, but there is notable misclassification in varietal adoption. We find that the mismatch in DNA-based and self-reported adoption measures leads to some variation in the factors that influence the likelihood and intensity of adoption of ICVs. This suggests that appropriate varietal identification helps in better understanding of the drivers of adoption. In addition, we find that despite the observed varietal misclassification, farmers’ perceptions of biofortification trait is significantly correlated with the probability and intensity of adoption of ICVs using both DNA-based and self-reported varietal identification. This suggests that inclusion of biofortification trait in cassava matters for both the likelihood and extent of adoption of ICVs. The latter lends credence to the emerging policy interests in breeding programs for biofortified crops to address hidden hunger in Nigeria.

Income inequality and distribution patterns in the cassava value chain in the Oyo State, Nigeria: a gender perspective

“…Most studies on the CVC focus on the production node, with only a few studies considering activities at the processing and market nodes of the chain. At the production node, studies address issues related to adoption of improved cassava varieties (Opata et al. , 2021; Afolami et al.…”

Farmers' preferences for sustainable intensification attributes in sorghum-based cropping systems: evidence from Mali

“…(2022) found that smallholder farmers in Ghana showed strong preferences for cropping systems that provide positive nutritional gain. Our finding also lends credence to the growing R&D interventions geared toward improving farmers' dietary protein via sorghum–legume intercropping (Sauer et al ., 2018), and toward addressing deficiencies of micronutrients such as vitamins, zinc and iron via biofortification of sorghum (Shikuku et al ., 2019; Opata et al ., 2021).…”

Because error has a price: A systematic review of the applications of DNA fingerprinting for crop varietal identification

“…Nonetheless, only seven out of ten farmers classified their varieties correctly. The reviewed studies report that 34 percent of cassava farmers (on aggregate), 28 percent of maize farmers, and 19 percent of rice farmers misclassified the variety grown on their farms (Floro et al, 2018; Kretzschmar et al, 2018; Trinade, 2019; Wossen et al, 2019a; Opata et al, 2021). The dichotomy of improved versus local variety allows disaggregating the false identifications into false positives (FP, i.e., a local variety is labeled as improved) and false negatives (FN, i.e., an improved variety is labeled as local).…”

“…Nevertheless, the validity of these assessments is critically dependent on farmer identification and recall of crop varieties. There exists a plethora of evidence in the literature for the misidentification of varieties by farmers and subject experts (Opata et al, 2021).…”