Constructing A Climate-Smart readiness index for smallholder farmers: The case of prioritized bundles of climate information services and climate smart agriculture in Ghana

•Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) technology and Climate Information Services (CIS) prioritization and bundling are perquisite technology update readiness.•Criteria for CIS-CSA prioritization in includes Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) achievement, addressing Gender, Youth and Social Inclusion (GSI), Enabling Environment (EE), One-Health Achievement (OHA), End-User Friendliness (EUF) and ultimately to construct a Climate Smart Readiness Index (CSRI)•Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) technologies and Climate Information Services (CIS) bundling are more impactful when integrated.•The CS and EUF had a significant intra-rater agreement among farmers while EE had a substantial intra-rater agreement among advisors.•One-Health Achievement (OHA) is a fundamental factor in determining Climate Smart Readiness Index (CSRI) for farmers whereas Enabling Environment (EE) was considered more important by advisors.•Based on this, Climate Readiness Index is useful for bundling purposes and not for prioritization.•This is an evidence for farmer preparedness in the context of resilience, productivity, adaptation, and mitigation•Policy makers and agricultural practioners will best understand and have prior knowledge about the priority setting for effective bundles and this study will help them to bundle during policy and programme formulation. Issues around bundling of climate smart agriculture (CSA) and climate information services (CIS) have been kept relatively distinct whereas in reality, they are more impactful when integrated. Using the case of the Accelerating Impacts of CGIAR Climate Change Research in Africa (AICCRA) Project that emphasizes bundling as a critical component of research in development, six regions of Ghana were purposively selected based on the identified value chain crops for implementation. 120 respondents including practicing farmers and advisors as reference, rated contributions of 21 innovations to 25 climate smartness indicators. These include gender, youth and social inclusion (GSI), enabling environment (EE), ability to enhance soil, water, crop and animal health (One-Health Achievement) (OHA), end-user friendliness (EUF) and climate smart agriculture (CS) for prioritization, bundling and ultimately to construct a Climate Smart Readiness Index (CSRI). There was a high level of concordance between the ratings of farmers and advisors on the Climate Smartness; moderate concordance on OHA and a lower concordance on GSI. The CS and EUF had a significan