Yerba mate is an extremely important business in southern Brazil in environmental as well associoeconomic terms, providing the main economic alternative for many municipalities andserving as a source of income and jobs in rural settings. However, systems to produce yerbamate in Brazil involve little technology compared to other crops. Performance of commercialyerba mate plantations is visibly lower than experimental ones: national productivity inplantations was 8 t/ha in 2016, while in research areas this number exceeded 18 t/ha andreached a maximum value of 35 t/ha. Aspects such as genetic quality, vegetation production,nutrition, and planting/harvest season, for example, receive little consideration by producers,leading to gradual degradation in commercial plantations and reducing productivity. Thisobservation was confirmed in 2012 in a need survey conducted among producers, technicians,and manufacturers working with yerba mate. Starting in 2013, various technology transferactivities in this area began. Technologies were organized into a production system entitledErva 20. Software was also developed to assist in diagnostics of yerba mate plantations tocalculate fertilizer and to conduct economic analyses. However, the scarcity of resources limitsimplementation of these assets and technologies in the sector. This project consequently willestablish technology transfer activities to provide and insert the technologies contained in theErva 20 system and to research the factors that limit innovation in the yerba mate sector. Thissystem was conceived by organizing technologies and management practices developed byEmbrapa Florestas and its partners throughout its history of research on planted yerba mate.One stage of the project will focus on disseminating and transfer of the Erva 20 system, as wellas the Manejo-Matte, Aduba-Matte, and Planin-Matte software tools, which can assist indecision-making within yerba mate production systems. The target audience for theseactivities will be multipliers who work in the labor market, as well as in technical and/orsuperior education and training. Another stage will involve socioeconomic studies withinnovative methodologies to identify the factors that affect technology adoption by ruralproducers, and the relative impacts of some of the technologies used in Erva 20 in theplantations. This data will be used to establish a more regionalized strategy for insertinginnovation in order to address the differences between producers in different yerba mateproducing centers. Institutional partnerships will be established to train multipliers and forparticipation in multiplier training, an innovation in technology transfer for yerba mate.Technology reference units will also be installed, where Erva 20 will be implemented andmonitored. The main outcomes of this project will be insertion of the Erva 20 system as areference for good practices in the yerba mate sector, introducing software as tools fordecision-making, and developing a regionalized strategy for technology transfer that willsubsequently be applied.