The vast majority of yield growth in African agriculture to
date has been due to improved seed varieties, as
opposed to technological improvements in cultivation
practices or other inputs. However, the lack of
development and supply of high quality seed stock for
Africa indigenous vegetables hampers cultivation, thus,
lowering their production. This paper aimed to assess the
potential opportunities and constraints in utilising
AVRDC-distributed vegetable seedkit in Arumeru district,
Tanzania, by identifying both the major types of AVRDCvegetable
seed preferred by farmers in Arumeru district
and the important factors motivating farmers’ households’
willingness to adopt AVRDC-indigenous vegetables
seedkit. Data were collected from 145 selected smallscale
farmers, who received the seedkit from AVRDC,
through administering questionnaire, participant
observation and interview methods. Correlation and chisquare
tests were used to test hypotheses using R
software. The results showed that the most preferred
vegetables were those with multipurpose [high yield, high
consumption and income generation] benefits; and these
included tomato, African eggplant, African nightshade
and amaranthus. There was low level of willingness to
adopt pumpkin leaves, jute mallow, spider plant and
sunnhemp as vegetable crops. The main constraints to
vegetable production included the lack of knowledge and
skills on vegetable production, lack of capital and land to
assess the entire seedkit. This study offers answers on
opportunities and challenges regarding utilisation of the
distributed vegetable seedkit and that farmers in the
study area may be adopting multiple forms of vegetable
varieties and types from the same kit simultaneously.
These results are very important in understanding the
challenges facing farmers’ choice of production and
consumption of the vegetables in Arumeru district and
emphasise the role of knowledge dissemination in
promoting and adopting agricultural technologies.