RA 00110.pdf - OAR@ICRISAT

Making Millet Improvement Objectives Fit Client Needs:
Improved Genotypes and Traditional Management
Systems in Burkina Faso
P.J. Matlon 1
Abstract
Farm-level surveys and farmers' test data from three agroclimatic zones of Burkina Faso are analyzed to
demonstrate how results of on-farm research can help define more appropriate objectives for pearl millet
improvement programs in the West African semi-arid tropics. Indigenous varietal change and farmers'
planting practices are examined to set guidelines for an efficient allocation of program resources among
cultivars with various maturity lengths and degrees of photoperiod sensitivity. The gap in performance
between on-station trials and on-farm tests is reviewed and contributing factors are considered. An analysis
of land-use patterns shows that millet is generally cultivated in highly diversified farming systems except in
the extreme arid regions. As a result management decisions affecting millet are not independent but are a
function of comparative returns to inputs applied to other crops competing for farm-level resources. Due to
millet's greater suitability to poor soils and its lower response to inputs, farmers maximize prof its and reduce
risk by cultivating millet on their least productive land with little use of variable inputs. The paper concludes
that in farming systems where millet competes with crops which are significantly more management
responsive, breeders should consider low-input management on marginal land as the most probable
condition in which new millet cultivars will be adopted on an important scale in the foreseeable future. Crop
improvement programs aiming at such systems should emphasize improving yield stability by incorporating
greater resistance to yield-loss factors at the farm level.
1. Principal Economist, ICRISAT, B.P. 4881, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
Submitted as CP 374 by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT).
ICRISAT (International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics). 1987. Proceedings of the International Pearl Millet
Workshop, 7-11 April 1986, ICRISAT Center, India. Patancheru, A.P. 502324, India: ICRISAT.
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