Use and institutionalisation of process innovations: participatory crop improvement processes in India and Nepal

Conroy, Czech (2009) Use and institutionalisation of process innovations: participatory crop improvement processes in India and Nepal. In: Innovation Asia-Pacific Symposium, 4-7 May 2009, Kathmandu, Nepal .

Abstract

Institutions – the rules of the game – and institutional processes shape and influence the nature of technological innovations (e.g. their suitability for resource-poor farmers), and can have a profound effect. There has been growing recognition in recent years that developing effective national and local capacity for pro-poor agricultural innovation is more important than the development and promotion of any particular technologies, because the ‘recommendation domain’ and ‘useful life’ of any technology is limited. Thus, what is needed is a set of institutions and an innovation system that can efficiently generate a wide range of relevant technologies on a long-term basis, responding promptly to changes in agricultural systems(e.g. new pests or diseases, changes in climate or changes in the relative scarcity of factors of production) as they occur. This paper describes two institutional innovations to crop improvement processes and systems that have been introduced and promoted in Nepal and in parts of India. It describes and assesses respectively the extent to which they have been used and institutionalised; and also considers factors affecting institutionalisation.

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