Accelerating the Adoption of Climate-resilient Seed Technologies in India

Finding the right partners and places to ask questions is paramount to understanding the drivers of agricultural transformation. To facilitate opportunities for researchers and partners to develop trust and scope early-stage evaluation questions, DAISI funded small proposal development grants to support very preliminary, exploratory research activities, including researcher travel. This proposal development grant explored research themes related to provision of information (crop extension) and access to inputs under the cross-cutting theme of resource use and climate resilience.

Building on Dar et al. (2023), this proposal development grant explored low-cost ways to leverage agro-dealers to accelerate the learning and adoption of new seeds among farmers in Gujarat, India. Specifically, researchers focused on wilt-resilient chickpea varieties with strong agronomic evidence to support their performance in drought conditions. Proposal development activities included negotiating data-use agreements with two chickpea seed distributors in the study area and conducting surveys with local agro-dealers.

These surveys revealed that agro-dealers do not currently stock wilt-tolerant chickpea varieties and rely on distributors and trial packets for information about new seeds. Moving forward, the researchers plan to test light-touch methods to engage agro-dealers in seed extension efforts, including working with distributors to deliver trial packets and leveraging WhatsApp groups that agro-dealers use with farmers to share information about stress-tolerant chickpea varieties.