Objective setting
Jacob van Etten, Rachel Chase, Kauê de Sousa
What is the main question?
Trial objectives could span a wide range of agronomic and social questions. Studies have used tricot to evaluate farmer preferences for yield, drought tolerance, and disease resistance in crops such as common bean in Ethiopia and Nicaragua, groundnut in West Africa, and bread wheat in South Asia. Beyond pure agronomy, tricot trials have been designed to explore gender-differentiated trait preferences, as in work examining how men and women farmers in sub-Saharan Africa prioritise post-harvest attributes like cooking quality and storability. Other trials have used the tricot approach to study climate adaptation, pairing trial data with gridded weather observations to model genotype-by-environment interactions at scale.
Which technologies will be tested?
Researchers should consider and propose technologies that have the potential to solve local problems and can be easily adopted by farmers. The more you know about the agronomic problems experienced by the target group, the more precisely you can select the technology options. As a start, a total number of 8-12 technology options is recommended. A good way to select these from an even larger pool is by conducting focus group discussions with a core group of local farmers from diverse locations. A local (check) variety is often planted near the tricot trial or is included as one of the three options (although it should not be a fourth option or option 'D').
For example, topics to discuss (depending on the goal of the trial) could include:
- selection of the number of options
- selection of the check variety (local variety)
- selection of options for multi-seasonal trials
Which aspects will be evaluated?
Maybe one technology option provides higher yields, but another one is less labor-intensive. Both aspects can be important, and there may be many more aspects that matter. You will need to define the aspects to be evaluated by the farmer-researchers. These can be defined by consultation with experienced field agents and local future users of the new technologies, both women and men of all ages. Many aspects can be evaluated, but it is recommended to pick no more than ten aspects. With more aspects, farmers may be discouraged by the complexity of observation. The key question must be: What really matters to the farmers? Most importantly, farmers should be asked to give their opinion about the overall performance of their technology options. Also, they should be asked why they prefer the best option. This is an open question and it is therefore possible that farmers mention aspects that had not been considered beforehand.
How will data be collected?
Tricot uses the Open Data Kit (ODK) Collect app as the main way to collect data. The ODK Collect app is available free of charge on Google Play Store and can be installed on any Android smartphone or tablet. It allows implementers to register participating farmers, and field agents can collect farmers’ observation data for each of the criteria. When field agents gather the data collected by farmers in the field, the data will be stored on the device until an internet connection is available. All data is then sent to the ClimMob server for storage and analysis. During different steps of the project, ODK forms will be automatically generated by the ClimMob software or will be available on the ClimMob website for download. Enketo is a web-based tool used to upload data when the ODK application is not available (or when using an iPhone). Other data collection methods can be made available (interactive voice response, Whatsapp). For example, in the near future, an AI-enabled application to record and translate languages (Sikia) will become available. Contact the ClimMob team for more information.
In which area will the project be conducted?
Project implementers define the area where the trial will take place, which should be related to Target Product Profiles (TPPs) in the case of variety evaluations. The area should represent the conditions of the target environment - the area were the tested options will be used if they perform well. For an explanation on how to select areas, see the section on location selection.