This study makes use of data on wheat production in the Punjab of Pakistan from 1979 to 1985 to 1) examine patterns of varietal diversity in farmers' fields both at the regional and district levels and 2) identify how and in what ways genetic resources have contributed to wheat productivity and...

Sources of yield growth in wheat are investigated based on a stylized framework of technical change. Evidence suggests that the relative contribution of input intensification to yield growth has diminished in recent years and is likely to continue to decline in the future. One potential source...

This paper synthesizes the evidence on cereal crop productivity in developing countries over the past 30 years and looks at future prospects for productivity growth. For more than three decades we have witnessed the phenomenal growth of cereal crop productivity in the developing world. Termed...

This publication, through its focus on maize production in drought stressed areas of developing countries, explores economic, research, and policy issues related to maize agriculture in marginal areas of the developing world generally. Key questions in the debate over agriculture in marginal vs....

In sub-Saharan Africa, greater use of mineral fertilizers is crucial to increasing food production and slowing the rate of environmental degradation. Regional growth rates in fertilizer consumption have never been particularly high, in part because the real price of fertilizer is higher in...

Identifying the appropriate germplasm to be improved is a key component of any participatory breeding effort because of its implications for impacts on social welfare and genetic diversity. This paper describes a method developed to select a subset of 17 populations for a participatory breeding...

Four environments with contrasting potential for agricultural productivity and infrastructure development were identified in Guanajuato State, Mexico, to test hypotheses about the relationship of maize biological diversity to the region's potential for agricultural productivity and...

The principal advantage of in situ conservation is that it allows adaptive evolutionary processes to continue in the species that are being conserved. For a cultivated crop species, in situ conservation involves farmers' management of their own genetic resources even as the farmers themselves...