Despite a significant growth in food production over the past half-century, one of the most important challenges facing society today is how to feed an expected population of some nine billion by the middle of the 20th century. To meet the expected demand for food without significant increases in prices, it has been estimated that we need to produce 70-100 per cent more food, in light of the growing impacts of climate change, concerns over energy security, regional dietary shifts and the Millennium Development target of halving world poverty and hunger by 2015. The goal for the agricultural sector is no longer simply to maximize productivity, but to optimize across a far more complex landscape of production, rural development, environmental, social justice and food consumption outcomes. However, there remain significant challenges to developing national and international policies that support the wide emergence of more sustainable forms of land use and efficient agricultural production. The lack of information flow between scientists, practitioners and policy makers is known to exacerbate the difficulties, despite increased emphasis upon evidence-based policy. In this paper, we seek to improve dialogue and understanding between agricultural research and policy by identifying the 100 most important questions for global agriculture. These have been compiled using a horizon-scanning approach with leading experts and representatives of major agricultural organizations worldwide. The aim is to use sound scientific evidence to inform decision making and guide policy makers in the future direction of agricultural research priorities and policy support. If addressed, we anticipate that these questions will have a significant impact on global agricultural practices worldwide, while improving the synergy between agricultural policy, practice and research. This research forms part of the UK Government's Foresight Global Food and Farming Futures project

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Stakeholder participation is expected to improve the efficiency, equity, and sustainability of natural resource management research and development (R&D) projects by ensuring that research reflects users’ priorities, needs, capabilities, and constraints. Use of participatory methods and tools is growing rapidly; however, there is little systematic evidence about what participation actually means in practice, or about what difference it makes. Based on an inventory of 59 self‐described participatory R&D projects in the area of natural resource management, this article characterizes the typical project and analyzes how stakeholders are selected, how they participate in the research process, and what their involvement means for project costs and impacts. The results suggest that, while projects are generating a range of direct and indirect benefits for participants, more careful attention needs to be paid to achieving equitable impacts. Current practices may lag behind best practices in key areas, such as power sharing and participant selection, and may therefore be missing important contributions from women and other marginalized groups.

This article identifies key characteristics of participatory research and development(R&D) in the agricultural sector: it is client‐driven, requires decentralized technology development, devolves to farmers the major responsibility for adaptive testing, and requires institutions and individuals to become accountable for the relevance and quality of technology on offer. Through case study material drawn from Latin America, Asia and Africa, the article then reviews ways by which institutions have responded to these characteristics and raises issues for further elaboration. Steps need to be taken, in particular, to safeguard equity, both between the more and less vocal groups of farmers, and between the requirements of present and future generations (the latter referring particularly to environmental concerns). It is argued that participatory R&D alone is insufficient to deliver innovations relevant to diverse client groups: policy mechanisms are required to define which clients are to participate, whose agendas are to drive the process, and what organizational innovations are needed to move agricultural R&D in these directions.

Gender-responsive breeding is a new approach to making sure modern breeding takes advantage of opportunities to improve gender equality in agriculture. Conventional research on the acceptability of modern varieties has scarcely addressed gender differences during adoption studies. Gender-responsive breeding starts from a different premise that adoption and social impact will be enhanced if gender is addressed at early stages of variety design and priority setting in breeding. However, until recently, there was no concrete way to integrate gender considerations into the practice of breeding. This chapter draws lessons for the future from three RTB breeding programs innovating with gender-responsive breeding with a focus on piloting novel tools. The new G+ tools are designed to help gender researchers and breeders make joint, evidence-based decisions about the significance of gender differences for customer targeting and trait prioritization in variety development. Their piloting in the context of each program’s practice of gender-responsive breeding throws light on some valuable good practices that contributed to successful innovation.

Participatory Plant Breeding (PPB) involves scientists, farmers, and others, such as consumers, extensionists, vendors, industry, and rural cooperatives in plant breeding research. It is termed 'participatory' because many actors, and especially the users, can have a research role in all major stages of the breeding and selection process. While some have argued that commercial, private sector plant breeding has long been client-driven, or 'participatory' under another name, the application of 'PPB' to reach poor client groups, to breed for high-stress, heterogeneous environments and to incorporate diverse traits to meet specific client preferences is resulting in fundamental changes in the way plant genetic resources are being managed. PPB merits analysis as a separate approach. The notion of 'PPB' is a relatively recent one: detailed inventories show that most of the 65 'longerterm' cases have begun within the last 10 years, whether they were located in public sector or non-governmental crop improvement programs. With such 'newness'comes a wealth of terminology and divergent technical, social and organizational strategies under the general rubric of 'PPB'. This article aims to set up a framework for differentiating among PPB approaches. Only by discriminating among cases can one understand how each PPB approach can lead to a different outcome, and so be able to make informed choices about which approach to pursue. The key variables explored for discriminating among PPB approaches include: the institutional context, the bio-social environment, the goals set, and the kind of 'participation' achieved, (including the stage and degree of participation and the roles different actors undertake). It is only when these variables are clearly described that current and potential practitioners can start to link the 'type of PPB' employed (method and organizational forms) with the type of impacts achieved. An ending illustration of ongoing PPB programs suggests the practical utility of this 'PPB framework'.

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