Coordinating partnerships among stakeholders is one of the frequently mentioned areas in the reviewed papers for capacity building. Terms the papers used were slightly different such as aligned partnerships or coordinated alliances, yet appeared interchangeable. The importance of coordinated partnerships comes from the fact that stakeholders collectively provide creative thinking and innovative options and generate synergies. Also, coordinated partnerships incorporate various interests and values, and effectively question power dynamics [29]. Nevertheless, difficulties arise when building and sustaining partnerships because stakeholders’ participation changes with economic and political agendas. Furthermore, levels of stakeholders’ endowment of accessible information and resources discriminate their participation in partnership as it may disproportionately favor particular stakeholders [29]. Starting from an end-user of the technology, Machuka (2001) emphasized engagement of farmers and farmer organizations in decision-making and partnership. This bottom-up approach can encourage farmers’ full involvement for solutions suited to a local agro-ecology and socioeconomic system, not short-term quick-fix solutions [25, 30]. Yet, the reviewed papers focused more on public-private partnerships due to the nature of agricultural biotechnology; commercialization of research outcomes and their marketing, distribution and trade.

Generally, the public sector that includes government agencies, public institutions, and universities is an initial driving force for biotechnology because of necessary upfront investment and lack of economic incentives for private participation. The public investment in the technology is justified by that the outcomes have characteristics of public goods i.e. contributing to social benefits and welfare [31]. The agricultural research intensity, or ARI, is a commonly used indicator to assess national agricultural research efforts. ARI is an expression of national expenditure on public agricultural research and development as a share of agricultural gross domestic product or GDP [32]. Since the 1960s, developing countries have made little improvement with ARIs although agriculture accounts for a large share of their overall economy [32]. In addition to the insufficient national efforts, increasingly restrictive ownership of knowledge and materials changes patterns of partnerships driven by profits, and entails high costs for the public sector to deliver its research outcomes for public good. This trend disadvantages the public sector in developing countries to move biotechnology programs forward on their own [14].

The Article 22 of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety recognizes the essential role of the private sector in creating and strengthening developing countries’ capacity; effective implementation of the Protocol requires facilitated private sector involvement [33]. The public-private partnership differs from a one-direction technology transfer in that the two sectors mutually benefit [9]. Through the partnership, the private sector gains access to local potential markets, regulatory or financial incentives from the government, and may enhance public relations from its involvement. The public sector, on the other hand, earns systemic marketing and management skills, additional capital, and advanced knowledge [31]. Most importantly, the private sector involvement can facilitate commercialization of the public or joint research outcomes. The private sector tends to better read market signals than the public sector with limited know-hows in commercialization. Arrangements with venture capital, cooperative projects or more likely on a contract-basis can be a feasible way to engage the private sector in partnership [33].

In developing countries, disincentives exist for private participation such as high costs of serving resource-poor farmers who are often remotely located, difficulty in protecting intellectual property rights (IPRs), unpredictable regulatory systems, and immature value chains for agricultural products [32]. While the two sectors should cooperate to define common goals, identify each other’s complementary assets, and analyze market potentials, they need to acknowledge fundamental differences in their operational values and cultures. The public sector intends to maximize social benefits mostly by targeting resource-poor farmers whereas the private sector operates for financial benefits. Thus, the two should negotiate to avoid impinging on each other’s market segment or creating monopoly once the private sector is well established after the public support at the early stages of the private sector involvement [26].

Besides the public-private partnership, it may be essential to establish geographic alliances among public institutions across neighboring countries that have different comparative advantages in research and development, and resource endowments under similar agro-ecological conditions. A regional partnership allows for public institutions in developing countries to gain bargaining power and available resources, cross-license one another, share the costs, and increase the size of a potential market [26, 31]. It also raises a political voice of the region and in some cases helps compete with the private sector. Yet, spreading limited resources across too many regional partners may increase coordination costs and fail to sustain their involvement [34].

The reviewed papers mostly emphasized the public-private partnership due to the nature of agricultural biotechnology, participation of farmers and consumers as the technology end-users must be ensured. Without their active participation in decision-making, outcomes of the technology could be little relevant to urgent production concerns, and increase public skepticism in the safety of outcomes.

Resources available for agricultural investment are one of the indicators of the efforts to strengthen capacity [8]. Likewise, effective mobilization of capable personnel, supportive infrastructure, and favorable market conditions facilitate development and utilization of the technology. This requires long-term political commitment with ensured budgetary sources especially when other financial means are limited in developing countries [8, 32].

Governments need to allocate sufficient and predictable budget in order to tap global advances in agricultural biotechnology for improved food security [26]. One challenge in doing so is to balance funds between basic and applied research, and between programs tied and untied to political agendas [32]. Another challenge is to manage a funding mechanism that is flexible without heavy bureaucracy. Complex and inflexible funding mechanisms prevent stakeholders from swiftly responding to market trends and needs [35]. At the same time, responsible government agencies must transparently manage public funds to earn public trust for sustained supports of the technology [25].

While heavy dependency on international donors or limited national funding may reduce national will to assign funds to biotechnology [9], collaboration with the private sector can identify a new venue for additional capital such as commercializing research outcomes. Their commercialization allows for the public sector to capitalize its investment, further improve research facilities, and incentivize highly skilled staffs in order to retain them [33]. This comes back to establishing strategic partnerships between the two sectors.

It is necessary to set clear priorities and strategies for agricultural biotechnology to target the most needed for food security and other agricultural goals [8]. When research agendas reflect national priorities, massive support can be more easily gathered [9]. For this reason, many agricultural research organizations have instituted formal priority-setting mechanisms, often with donor support, to ensure national goals and needs are consistent with their resource allocation [36].

Applicability of agricultural biotechnology is different based on farming practices, agro-ecological conditions, socioeconomic status of users and trade regulations. These factors determine to what extent the users would take up the biotechnology, yet complicate setting research priorities and agendas. Priorities and agendas may be established with two approaches; a supply-oriented or demand-oriented approach [36]. The supply-oriented approach largely sets priorities within a hierarchical research system as in top-down. The demand-oriented approach sets them based on user perspectives, and employs consultative and participatory methods. If implemented at the priority-setting stage, the demand-oriented approach can select more suited types of the technology, and better capture different needs of user groups [4, 36].

Many research agencies in developing countries established biotechnology programs without defining clear priorities even under complex market and trade conditions. Part of the reason is that adequate capacity was unavailable to assess the needs and determine the priorities [37]. Additionally, it is difficult to integrate research priorities both pro-poor and pro-market because they often conflict with one another, and require initial consensus between the public and private sector [26, 38].

Political climates strongly influence the ability of stakeholders to express their capacity [39]. Instead, policy makers as a stakeholder can set the tone of political climates through a regulatory system around agricultural biotechnology. A regulatory system thus can be a good proxy to gauge a political tone for the technology. In line with this, Byerlee (2002) and Hall (2005) stressed investment in regulatory systems [8, 14].

The public and private sectors engaged in agricultural biotechnology are directly subject to relevant regulations. They are influenced by and adapt to how the regulatory system functions. The two sectors operate more effectively under a regulatory system that is sensible and consistent as it deeply affects the technology outcomes, their marketing, trade and usage [8]. Transparency of the system is equally critical to ensure the perceived independence and objectivity of the decision-making process [15]. Yet, it is mostly the responsible government agencies that set, run and modify a regulatory system in the local, national, and international contexts [8]. In this regard, a national government can act as a system builder and facilitator to determine a level of technology uptake and utilization. As preference of biotechnology products varies across developing countries, individual countries should establish a customized regulatory system that meets their own needs and goals [9, 29].

A supportive regulatory system around biotechnology allows its efficient use with favorable biosafety and IPRs policies [14]. In particular, the value of IPRs tends to be less appreciated across developing countries because of their limited investment in biotechnology itself, underdeveloped IPR regulatory protocols and low private sector participation. For effective IPRs, a government has to define a protection level of biotechnology outcomes, set regulations that conform to international IPR provisions, and determine cost effectiveness of the granted protection to the inventors and end-users of the protected outcomes [29]. While it is essential to set a regulatory system customized to the needs and values of an individual country, a regional coordination of the individual systems is as essential to create synergies for improved regional food security. A major challenge is the current regulatory heterogeneity on biotechnology and its outcomes. Due to a variety of political stances on biotechnology, approval of a new biotechnology product does not occur simultaneously across trade partners and their regulatory systems [40].

For developing countries that depend on international trade for agricultural products, changes in external environments are a significant consideration for their regulatory system. Presently, one of the external factors that influence biotechnology adoption is the mixed signal on agricultural biotechnology that the United States and European Union send to markets. The American policy stance on biotechnology emphasizes product similarities between the conventional and biotechnical, or transgenic breeding. This approach is based on the principle of substantial equivalence, in which transgenic products are viewed as comparable to the products of conventional breeding. On the other hand, European skepticism on biotechnology products arises from the precautionary principle in which they are viewed as fundamentally different from conventional breeding [41]. This mixed signal often acts as an important variable in developing countries where the two powers probably set the rules for food aid programs as well as agricultural trade.

In short, a sound regulatory system for agricultural biotechnology should be flexible in decision-making and prompt in improving regulations. It should also disseminate timely information and allocate appropriate responsibilities among stakeholders [8]. Simple presence of a sound regulatory system does not guarantee much unless capacity to operationalize the system is built hand-in-hand. Therefore, capacity building needs to be emphasized with setting a regulatory system.

Science in general, and biotechnology in particular, has hardly evolved in a socio-political vacuum since the public tend to determine the fate of a technology and its outcomes with their acceptance or rejection [8, 33]. Public confidence thus decides the extent to which its society may adopt and further invest in the technology. Accordingly, public perception of the risk-benefit influences the direction of technological innovation, and is influenced by information from industry, government, scientists, interest groups, and media [33]. For this reason, it is critical to assess the validity of provided information based on science, social values and uncertainties attached to the outcomes, and policy options to manage the uncertainties [29]. While regulatory agencies are expected to provide the public with factual information on biotechnology products, competence of those agencies in many developing countries is often questioned. Furthermore, passive political reactions to intensifying debates on biotechnology products may cause public skepticism on the technology itself and the responsible authorities.

Other obstacles exist against information sharing with the public. Ineffective or inexistent science education in developing countries prevents the public from keeping pace with advancing biotechnology and its benefit and risk [33]. Moreover, how to frame the dialogue influences public perception of the technology, as false information creates conflicting claims and confuses the public. In this regard, the Article 23 of Cartagena Protocol promotes public awareness through educational campaigns for the safe transfer, handling, and use of the technology [42]. In particular, educating a specific user-group such as farmers and consumers helps strengthen their confidence and knowledge to participate in the decision-making process [29].

Roles the media assume are increasingly visible in biotechnology, and their impacts are well documented. In part, power in policy-making revolves around the ability to control media attention to an issue and frame the issue in favorable terms [43]. These two characteristics of media coverage both reflect and shape how the issue is decided, by whom and with what outcomes [43]. For instance, Golden Rice, a transgenic rice variety with enhanced pro-vitamin A to help alleviate vitamin A deficiency in developing countries, has both benefitted and suffered from media coverage. Also, the media has partly influenced the rice’s current regulatory status, a regulatory limbo [44]. For as sensitive an issue as agricultural biotechnology, the media can sway the direction of public perception with unsubstantiated advocate, neutral and fair coverage or sensationalized disapproval.

If safe application of agricultural biotechnology is to improve food security in developing countries, the technology should coevolve with the public consensus on the technology in the social, political, cultural and economic terms. Therefore, informing the public of all aspects of the technology is essential for a mutual understanding of its benefit, risk, cost, and policy direction. Yet, implementing awareness campaigns require funds with policy support, and the campaigns need wide collaboration for information dissemination logistics. All activities are only possible with stakeholders whose capacity is sufficiently built to implement them [29].