The study of innovation adoption and return to researches investment

Cereal breeding programs were started since 1930s in IRAN and 70 cultivars of wheat were released till 1999. Previous researches showed that returns to investment in wheat breeding is high. Data were used in those researches were obtain from located experiments in agricultural research station. But in present research , the effect of utilization of new cultivars of wheat in farmer fields were evaluated, and extension costs, as completing stage of research, included in the analysis. Because of performance potential of new cultivar is depended on utilization of better agronomy techniques in wheat cultivation, number and costs of researches on wheat in the other research disciplines was also included. Innovation adoption score of farmers computed and yield differences of wheat compared between acceptors of new cultivar and non acceptors, in the similar management. This research had two main objectives: To estimate the adoption rate of agronomy research results ,and to estimate the returns to investment in wheat breeding. The primary goal of the study was to generate information for use by Iranian policy makers and donors in deciding an appropriate level of future funding for the wheat breeding programs. Improved wheat cultivars that included in the study were , Marvdashat in Fars , Mahdavy in Isfahan , Alvand in Hamadan and east Azarbayejan, Falat in Khorasan, Darab2 in Hormozgan and Chamran in Bosher provinces. Data were collected from farmers by survey method and registered information in agricultural centers and institutes. Result showed that wheat breeding cost, based on prices in 2001, was 5.1 billion Rials and weighted average of extension cost in wheat farms was 2412 Rials per hectare in the whole country. New cultivars have more yield than the formers cultivar .Utilization of these cultivars at least increased production and farmers income, 503 thousand ton and 654492 billion Rials respectively .The results showed that benefit cost ratio of investment in wheat breeding was more than 1 , and 1 Rials cost made 1.38 to 204.7 Rials benefit. It is concluding that investment in the wheat breeding programs creates too much benefit for farmers. Therefore , increasing the agricultural research budget, and judicial allocation of this budget coinciding with cost increasing trend is recommended.