In Morocco, the adoption of recent improved wheat varieties is low, casting doubt on whether investments in wheat research are paying off. This paper generates estimates of the returns to the national and international investment in wheat research for Morocco. The benefits are estimated by applying the endogenous switching regression model to data from a nationally representative sample survey of 2,296 wheat fields, whereas costs were estimated using data on public and CGIAR (INRA-CG) investments on wheat research in Morocco. Considering all the benefits and costs of wheat research investment in Morocco, we estimated a conservative benefit-cost ratio (BCR) of 19.64 with 623 thousand tons (14.8%) of additional wheat supply from domestic production and net economic benefit of US$355 million. We also estimated that institutional problems in the seed system identified by past research are causing the country to lose at least 746.6 thousand tons (17.7%) wheat production and net economic benefit of US$75.2 million. These results show that despite the institutional challenges, wheat research in Morocco is still paying off and the country has sufficient incentives to address the problems in the seed sector that prevent the development and uptake of recent varieties.

在摩洛哥，最近改良小麦品种的采用率很低，令人怀疑对小麦研究的投资是否有回报。本文对摩洛哥小麦研究的国家和国际投资回报进行了估计。收益是通过将内生转换回归模型应用于 2,296 个麦田的全国代表性抽样调查的数据来估算的，而成本是使用公共和 CGI​​AR (INRA-CG) 对摩洛哥小麦研究投资的数据估算的。考虑到摩洛哥小麦研究投资的所有收益和成本，我们估计保守的收益成本比（BCR）为 19.64，其中来自国内生产的额外小麦供应 62.3 万吨（14.8%），净经济效益为 3.55 亿美元。我们还估计，过去研究发现的种子系统中的体制问题导致该国至少损失 74.66 万吨（17.7%）的小麦产量和 7520 万美元的净经济效益。这些结果表明，尽管面临体制挑战，摩洛哥的小麦研究仍在取得成效，而且该国有足够的动力来解决种子行业阻碍新品种开发和推广的问题。