An adoptive measure of improved rice is relevant for increasing food production and minimizing downside effects of rapid population growth. This study seeks to provide an empirical insight on farmers' improved rice adoption decision processes and implicitly on farmers preference for 13 seed rice attributes, using a best-worst experiment and conditional logistic model (to explains the possible effects of the experiment on final choices of the best - worst attributes). The results showed that potential yield, maturity; seed viability, tolerance to pest and disease are respectively the first four important attributes for farmers choice for seed rice varieties. Additionally, we derived important policy implications for seed rice development, breeding priority setting and adoption in Sierra Leone, centred on the inclusion of farmers needs and participation in future seed rice related research to ensure continuous and appropriate adoption for achieving sustainable output in obviously poor and challenging farming conditions. Finally, we suggested that prerequisites for enabling improved rice to increase rice production in Sierra Leone should include farmers having improved access to seed rice and information as well as favourable policies supporting the development of agricultural sector. Acknowledgement : The authors gratefully acknowledge: Milton Kabbia, Edward Ndoko (both of Sierra Leone Agricultural Research Institute), Mahmoud K. Sesay (of Njala University) for their immense support during data collection; National Natural Science Foundation of China (NNSFC-71273233, 71333011), the Major Program of the Key Research Institute of Chinese Ministry of Education (No. 15JJD790032)