Accelerating varietal turnover through production and consumption trial packs: Experimental evidence from Ethiopia

Crop genetic improvement is central to raising agricultural productivity and resilience in low- and middle-income countries, yet use of improved varieties remains limited due to persistent supply- and demand-side constraints. We evaluate whether relaxing constraints to experimentation and subsequent expansion through production and consumption trial packs of wheat and teff can accelerate use, using a cluster randomized trial with a 2×2 factorial design among 1,800 smallholder farmers in 120 villages in Ethiopia. Seed trial packs enable farmers to experiment and harvest seed for replanting, thereby enabling expansion in subsequent seasons, while consumption trial packs allow assessment of consumption attributes. We find that seed trial packs accelerate use in the following season, as farmers replant and expand the area under promoted varieties. Consumption trial packs alone have no significant effect, likely due to limited availability of promoted varieties in local seed markets. However, combining both interventions yields modest additional gains, suggesting that consumption traits may influence production decisions when seed access constraints are relaxed. Thus, for open- or self-pollinated crops, lowering experimentation costs and enabling expansion through farmers’ own seed use can accelerate varietal turnover in settings with underdeveloped seed systems.