The role of plant breeding in adapting crops to climate changes that affect food production in developing countries is recognized as extremely important and urgent, alongside other agronomic, socio-economic and policy adaptation pathways. To enhance plant breeders’ capacity to respond to climate challenges, it is acknowledged that they need to be able to access and use as much genetic diversity as they can get. Through an analysis of data from a global survey, we explore if and how public breeders in selected developing countries are responding to climate challenges through a renewed or innovative use of plant genetic resources, particularly in terms of types of material incorporated into their breeding work as well as sources of such germplasm. It also looks at the possible limitations breeders encounter in their efforts towards exploring diversity for adaptation. Breeders are clearly considering climate challenges. In general, their efforts are aimed at intensifying their breeding work on traits that they were already working on before climate change was so widely discussed. Similarly, the kinds of germplasm they use, and the sources from which they obtain it, do not appear to have changed significantly over the course of recent years. The main challenges breeders faced in accessing germplasm were linked to administrative/legal factors, particularly related to obtaining genetic resources across national borders. They also underscore technical challenges such as a lack of appropriate technologies to exploit germplasm sets such as crop wild relatives and landraces. Addressing these limitations will be crucial to fully enhance the role of public sector breeders in helping to adapt vulnerable agricultural systems to the challenges of climate change.

Climate change can bring about large-scale irreversible physical impacts and systemic changes in the operating environment of public organizations. Research on preconditions for organizational adaptation to climate change has produced two parallel lines of inquiry, one focusing on macro-level norms, rules, and expectations and the other on meso-level culture, design, and structure within the organization. Drawing on the meta-theory of institutional logics, this study proposes a configurational approach to link institutionally aware top managers with the combination and reconciliation of macro- and meso-level logics. We identify government authority, professionalism, and market as macro-level institutional logics, and risk-based logic and capacity-based logic as critical meso-level institutional logics. Our theory proposes that (1) the macro- and meso-level institutional logics co-exist in systematic ways as to produce identifiable configurations, (2) the configurations are differentially associated with climate adaptation, and (3) the effects of each logic differ across the configurations. Using a 2019 national survey on approximately 1000 top managers in the largest U.S. transit agencies, we apply latent profile analysis to identify three distinct clusters: forerunner, complacent, and market-oriented. Only the forerunner cluster is adaptive to climate change, whereas the two others are maladaptive. Findings from the multigroup structural equation model also demonstrate varied effects of each institutional logic on adaptation across the clusters, confirming institutional work at play to reconcile and integrate co-existing and potential contradictory logics.

Much of the available evidence regarding COVID-19 effects on the scientific community in the U.S. is anecdotal and non-representative. We report findings from a based survey of university-based biologists, biochemists, and civil and environmental engineers regarding negative and positive COVID-19 impacts, respondent contributions to addressing the pandemic, and their opinions regarding COVID-19 research policies. The most common negative impact was university closures, cited by 93% of all scientists. Significant subgroup differences emerged, with higher proportions of women, assistant professors, and scientists at institutions located in COVID-19 “hotspot” counties reporting difficulties concentrating on research. Assistant professors additionally reported facing more unanticipated childcare responsibilities. Approximately half of the sample also reported one or more positive COVID-19 impacts, suggesting the importance of developing a better understanding of the complete range of impacts across all fields of science. Regarding COVID-19 relevant public policy, findings suggest divergence of opinion concerning surveillance technologies and the need to alter federal approval processes for new tests and vaccines.