Let’s map together: using spatial analysis to support market segmentation

By Bert Lenaerts & Neale Paguirigan

In 2025, approximately 690 Seed Product Market Segments (SPMS) have been identified through collaboration between CGIAR centers and national partners. According to Market Intelligence Brief 1, these SPMS were defined using eight harmonized Market Segment (MS) criteria to ensure consistency across crops and countries. These same criteria are now also applied to newly developed SPMS for vegetables such as tomato and pepper, as well as VACS crops in the future. Finding relevant data can be challenging to support evidence-based market segmentation. Luckily, several of these MS criteria can be linked to spatial datasets, such as production environments. For instance, elevation and climate zones data can help characterize the different production environments across crops.

Mapping maize production environments

Our method for quantifying production environments is based on a framework originally developed by Raymundo et al. (2018) for mapping potato-growing regions around the world. That framework combined FAO Global Agro-Ecological climate classifications (such as temperate, subtropical, and tropical) with elevation data from NASA to define what they called “mega-environments”. This enables us to group regions into “mega-environments” or product environments, like tropical lowlands and subtropical uplands. A critical parameter is the elevation threshold between lowland and highland, which differs by subregion (see Table 1).

To illustrate this spatial analysis approach, we used maize as a case study to identify different types of production environments. Figure 1 shows the resulting map of maize production environments.

Table 1. Tentative elevation threshold for lowland/upland by subregion

Refining the approach

The production environment approach is adaptable and can be applied to various crops beyond maize. To enhance its accuracy and relevance for market segmentation, we invite CGIAR centers, national partners, and researchers to join us in refining the spatial classification of crop production environments. Specifically, we seek your expertise to:

Improve the classification of thermal climate zones.

Validate and refine elevation thresholds for distinguishing lowland and upland areas across regions and crops, reflecting crop-specific growth requirements

Identify and contribute key spatial datasets that can improve the characterization of production environments.

Your insights will help enhance the accuracy and relevance of spatial data used to support market segmentation, and enable you to make market segmentation for your crop more evidence-based. If you have spatial datasets, expertise, or simply an interest in collaborating, we’d love to hear from you!

Bert Lenaerts, IRRI
b.lenaerts@cgiar.org

Neale Paguirigan, IRRI
n.paguirigan@cgiar.org

Raymundo, R., Asseng, S., Robertson, R., Petsakos, A., Hoogenboom, G., Quiroz, R., Hareau, G., and Wolf, J. 2018. Climate change impact on global potato production, European Journal of Agronomy, vol. 100, 87–98.

This work contributes to CGIAR Breeding for Tomorrow (B4T) Science Program through its Market Intelligence Area of Work.