Valuing Pre-Commercial Genetic Resources: A Maximum Entropy Approach

Genetic improvement has been a major contributor to agricultural productivity in the United States, but many questions about the economics of crop breeding, such as the value of pre‐commercial germplasm, remain unanswered. This study estimates the marginal value of poorly characterized materials con...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Zohrabian, Armineh, Traxler, Gregory, Caudill, Steven, Smale, Melinda
Formato: Journal Article
Lenguaje:Inglés
Publicado: Wiley 2003
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/10568/157888
Descripción
Sumario:Genetic improvement has been a major contributor to agricultural productivity in the United States, but many questions about the economics of crop breeding, such as the value of pre‐commercial germplasm, remain unanswered. This study estimates the marginal value of poorly characterized materials contained in the U.S. national germplasm system. Within the search theoretic framework, we apply a maximum entropy method to estimate the probability and the expected level of improvement in pest susceptibility relative to its best previously observed level. The results indicate that the lower‐bound estimate of benefit is significantly higher than the upper‐bound cost of conserving an accession.