Why do households cultivate landraces? : Wheat variety selection and in situ conservation in Turkey

Abstract

Socioeconomic/household characteristics, agroecological heterogeneity, market access, and variety characteristics are used to empirically explain why households continue to cultivate traditional varieties of wheat in Turkey even though higher-yielding modern varieties exist. These determinants are then used to examine on-farm diversity outcomes and how the availability of modern varieties is affecting the in situ conservation of crop genetic resources from landraces. Socioeconomic/household characteristics, agroecological heterogeneity, and market access are all found to jointly influence households' decisions to cultivate landraces and to affect on-farm diversity outcomes. Empirical estimation shows that variety characteristics do not jointly affect the probability that households plant landraces, nor do they affect on-farm diversity levels. Policy recommendations and ideas for future research are provided.