Guide for designing a national seed roadmap
The benefits
In short- Enables informed decision-making
- Assessment and design tools
- Goal-oriented personalisation
- Holistic and evidence-based guidance
This guide brings together and structures diverse methods and tools for implementing a seed sector assessment (SSA) and designing a national seed road map (NSRM). These enable informed decision-making and facilitate strategising on what interventions and investments key stakeholders in the seed sector should prioritise.
An SSA provides the answer to the primary seed sector performance question: Where are we now? An NSRM addresses two additional questions: Where do we want to go, and how will we get there? This guide provides resources to policy makers considering commissioning an NSRM and practitioners conducting the assessment and designing of an NSRM. It offers guiding concepts and presents tools in two categories: assessment and design tools. Users can select tools for a light-touch assessment of the seed system of a particular crop or crop group, or a comprehensive set of tools for conducting an interdisciplinary research project covering the entire seed sector with all its crops and seed systems, or anything in between.
The guide is designed to engage and equip a variety of users to take action:
- policymakers who may want to commission an SSA and/or an NSRM to obtain insights into the current seed sector and produce actionable strategic innovation pathways (SIPs);
- researchers who want to use a combination of research, participatory and interactive methods to better understand the seed sector;
practitioners who want to develop a holistic intervention to enhance the performance of a seed sector and advance the contribution of the seed sector to food system outcomes.
More information
The SSA and NSRM enable informed decision-making and facilitate strategising on what interventions and investments key stakeholders in the seed sector should prioritise. The resulting SSA and NSRM documents support evidence-based policymaking and regulatory reforms, with the NSRM elaborating strategies and steps for policy implementation.
The NSRM can guide the government, seed sector stakeholders and development partners in exploring and agreeing on ways to foster the development and transformation of the seed sector in a coordinated, aligned, and structured fashion, and may serve as a reference for stakeholder collaboration to achieve this.
When designing an NSRM that covers the entire seed sector, interactive multi-stakeholder workshops are recommended. The guide is adaptable to different contexts, purposes, and availability of resources, so the choice of tools and the sequence is up to the user.
Get in touch with our expert
Do you have a question about this guide or desiging a national seed road map? Or are you interested in collaborating? Please get in touch.
dr.ir. MH (Marja) Thijssen
Senior advisor plant genetic resources and seed systems
