Impact of Improved Wheat Variety Adoption on Wheat Productivity Using DNA Fingerprinting Data in Ethiopia

Abstract

Adoption of yield increasing technologies is seen as a key driver to increase agricultural production in Ethiopia. There is, however, limited empirical evidence on the adoption and impacts of improved crop varieties grown by smallholders. The existing studies on improved crop variety adoption and impacts mainly rely on farmers’ report in identifying crop varieties which is subject to error due to several factors among which farmers might not have complete information about the varieties they grow. To overcome this challenge, in this study we used DNA fingerprinting technique to accurately identify wheat varieties that farmers grow and then evaluate the role of using improved varieties on wheat yield. Varietal and plot level information were collected from 1421 randomly selected wheat plots from the major wheat growing regional states of Ethiopia. In quantifying the productivity impacts of improved varieties, Propensity Score matching method was used to empirically assess the impact of IWVs’ adoption on wheat productivity using DNA fingerprinting data. According to farmers’ recall method in variety identification, only 55.03% of the sample farmers used IWVs’ during the study year. However, using DNA fingerprinting method, 73.61% of the respondents were using IWVs’. The discrepancy between the two approaches show that relying on household survey methods in varietal identification underestimates improved crop variety adoption rates. According to household recall Kakaba is the most popular variety and had used by 7.18% of farmers; however, contradict to this, the result of DNA finger printing showed that Kubsa is most popular wheat variety and had used by 26.11% of the farmers. The study results further show that the mean productivity of the varieties is high for high genetic purity of varieties grown. The result of both farmers’ recall and DNA fingerprinting data further showed that farmer’s dependence on and adopted limited number of IWVs’ in Ethiopia. On average, the adoption of IWVs’ enhances wheat yield by 418.51Kg/ha. The policy implication of the findings is that accurate varietal level data collection is essential in estimating adoption rates and associated productivity impacts of research and extension services in crop variety development and promotion.