How to stimulate technological change to enhance agricultural productivity and reduce poverty remains an area of vigorous debate. In the face of heterogeneity among farm households and rural areas, one proposition is to offer potential users a ‘basket of options’ – a range of agricultural technologies from which potential users may select the ones that are best suited to their specific circumstances. While the idea of a basket of options is now generally accepted, it has attracted little critical attention. In this paper, we reflect on outstanding questions: the appropriate dimensions of a basket, its contents and how they are identified, and how a basket might be presented. We conceive a basket of options in terms of its depth (number of options related to a problem or opportunity) and breadth (the number of different problems or opportunities addressed). The dimensions of a basket should reflect the framing of the problem or opportunity at hand and the objective in offering the basket. We recognise that increasing the number of options leads to a trade-off by decreasing the fraction of those options that are relevant to an individual user. Farmers might try out, adapt or use one or more of the options in a basket, possibly leading to a process of technological change. We emphasise that the selection (or not) of specific options from the basket, and potential adaptation of the options, provide important opportunities for learning. Baskets of options can therefore be understood as important boundary concepts that invite critical engagement, comparison and discussion. Significant knowledge gaps remain, however, about the best ways to present the basket and to guide potential users to select the options that are most relevant to them.

如何刺激技术变革以提高农业生产力和减少贫困​​仍然是一个激烈争论的领域。面对农户和农村地区之间的异质性，一个建议是为潜在用户提供“一篮子选择”——一系列农业技术，潜在用户可以从中选择最适合其特定情况的技术。虽然一揽子选择的想法现在已被普遍接受，但它几乎没有引起批评的关注。在本文中，我们思考了悬而未决的问题：篮子的适当尺寸、其内容及其识别方式，以及篮子的展示方式。我们根据深度（与问题或机会相关的选项数量）和广度（解决的不同问题或机会的数量）来构想一揽子选项。篮子的尺寸应反映手头的问题或机会的框架以及提供篮子的目标。我们认识到，通过减少与单个用户相关的选项的比例，增加选项的数量会导致权衡。农民可能会尝试、调整或使用篮子中的一个或多个选项，这可能会导致技术变革的过程。我们强调从篮子中选择（或不选择）特定选项，以及对选项的潜在调整，为学习提供了重要的机会。因此，选项篮子可以被理解为重要的边界概念，邀请批判性参与、比较和讨论。然而，在展示篮子和指导潜在用户选择与他们最相关的选项的最佳方式方面仍然存在重大的知识差距。