A co-design approach with farmers in eliciting rice varietal trait preferences in South and Southeast Asia through the Investment Game Application

Rice crop genetic gain has helped achieve food security in the Global South through rice breeding efforts. Despite this, the turnover of improved rice varieties is still lower than expected. Most farmers continued cultivating popular but aging rice varieties susceptible to pests and diseases. Partnering with stakeholders on the onset of varietal priority setting can encourage co-design, hence, increasing rice varietal adoption and expanding scaling efforts. For eliciting farmers' preferences for rice varietal trait improvements, we propose a demanddriven approach using a novel digital tool, the Investment Game Application (IGA) which enables rice farmers to design their future rice varieties in the field. A total of 1,170 male and female farmers from four countries across South and Southeast Asia were invited to design trait improvements for their preferred rice varieties in two growing seasons. Through IGA, farmers were empowered to allocate a fixed breeding investment fund among 10–11 varietal trait improvements under varying levels of information on future market and climate change trends. When farmers were given this unique platform to act as shareholders and investors in public rice breeding, they prioritized biotic stress tolerance over all other traits. Farmers invested the majority of their funds in rice breeding for insect and disease resistance. They further allocate their investment funds to grain quality traits to align their varieties with ongoing market trends for finer rice grains. Women's preferences are predominantly in line with men's preferences and intrahousehold consensus further confirms these priorities. We conclude that demand-driven approaches like IGA that include stakeholders' voices offer an efficient platform for eliciting priorities for varietal trait improvements. Insights from innovative and participative data collection tools can help product co-design and scaling of improved rice varieties in farmers' fields.