Path-dependency in plant breeding: challenges facing participatory reforms in the Ethiopian Sorghum Improvement Program

Participatory plant breeding (PPB) seeks to involve farmers more closely in crop improvement in order to improve the impact of breeding efforts. While detailed discussions exist around appropriate methodologies for conducting PPB, little attention has been directed towards analysing breeding institutions. Such an analysis is necessary, both to understand the possible reasons for poor breeding impact, and to assess possibilities for changing breeding practices. This paper uses path-dependency theories to analyse the historical development of the Ethiopian Sorghum Improvement Program (ESIP), a long-running and sophisticated public-sector effort whose outputs have had limited adoption. Path-dependency analyses programme decisions in the past, the wider context supporting those decisions, and the possibility that these choices have established a pathway that resists the development of new approaches to research and innovation. Applying this theory to ESIP helps to understand the path-dependency of sorghum breeding, as early choices around environmental classifications, germplasm use, and F 1 hybrid development become 'locked-in', and consequently resist change. Technical constraints, breeding routines, and policy norms all reinforce particular choices from the past, as does the centralised organisation of the ESIP team. Most PPB efforts assume that poor breeder awareness of the traits farmers desire is the main reason for low impact, and thus concentrate on addressing this gap. institutional change in breeding is unlikely to emerge from a PPB intervention focusing on selection criteria alone. Breeding reforms will also need to engage with policies, embedded assumptions, and institutional factors that help maintain the existing ways of working. This highlights the value of analysing breeding institutions before designing breeding reforms, and the utility of path-dependency for such an analysis.