diversity of genetic materials, as well as other agricultural technologies, that excel in the poorest as well as the best farm environments; and
2) in the developed as well as the developing world, with the concern for achieving a more sustainable agriculture, there is a need for agricultural technologies that respond to a highly variable set of environmental niches created by socioeconomic as well as biophysical factors.
Conclusions
These needs can be satisfied most efficiently by
1) enhancing and taking advantage of genotype-by-environment interaction, rather than discouraging, depressing or rejecting it;
2) subjecting new materials as early in the development process as possible to poor as well as good farm conditions; and
3) searching for those materials that have the capability to maintain productivity in poor environments or that excel in superior environments (low and high regression coefficients, respectively) rather than suppressing them in favor of materials with a regression coefficient of unity.
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