Bringing Farmers Back into Breeding: Experiences with Participatory Plant Breeding and Challenges for Institutionalisation
Year: 2006
Type: report
Abstract: The purpose of this report is to provide an overview of Participatory Plant Breeding (PPB).It reviews the approach from both a technical and a social perspective and identifies the challenges for incorporating PPB in national plant breeding regimes, which we argue is necessary for its scaling-up and future sustainability.It draws on the concrete experiences of a number of PPB projects in Latin America, Africa and South East Asia.These are selected to provide a range of different levels of cooperation between researchers, NGOs and farmers.PPB can complement the centralised institutional plant breeding regimes that are common to industrial countries and practiced by the international institutes of the CGIAR and government institutions in developing countries.When used in combination with increased external inputs (fertilisers, chemical control of pests and diseases, improved irrigation and practices) these breeding approaches were successful in raising yields in the more favourable production areas and are generally referred to as "the green revolution".However, they have been less successful in providing small scale farmers in marginal agricultural areas with improved varieties.PPB has emerged from the perceived need for more farmeroriented approaches to the existing linear process of plant breeding, extension and distribution/marketing to farmers.This is partly because environmental conditions in the tropics and sub-tropics tend to be much more diverse, often even within short distances, than they are in most temperate countries.Secondly, it is recognised that farmer seed systems have a value and strength in coping with such diversity and that farmers have an inherent capability to select those materials that are most appropriate for their local requirements.This recognition led to the establishment, in the 1990s, of a number of pilot projects that involve farmers in various stages of the breeding process.These range from involving farmers in setting breeding objectives, in testing and selecting breeding materials in various stages of development in their own fields under different environmental conditions, and ultimately in providing farmers with the skills and materials to breed their own varieties.This report reviews the experiences of a range of selected pilot projects with a view to developing more general insights into PPB: what has worked well, what did not work so well and how PPB approaches can be improved.These insights are then used as basis for identifying the major challenges likely to be involved in the scaling-up and institutionalisation of PPB.These questions need to be placed in the general context of national crop improvement programmes and particularly how they can broaden their reach so that they also include small resource-poor farmers, especially those in more marginal areas that have thus far received little benefit from such programmes.The inputs for this review include a number cases (part two of this document) combined with information from the literature and our own experiences.The case study material has been provided by individual authors, who are partners in the various projects described.Some of them also had an input into the overall conceptualisation of this document.Their cooperation is gratefully acknowledged.Rather than trying to provide a critical evaluation of PPB, the emphasis of this report is on seeking to understand the different conditions under which various projects are implemented, how these relate to broader goals and how these influence the modes of cooperation between the various project stakeholders.At present PPB projects are generally pilot projects, utilising different approaches, with little indication about which are most effective and indeed how effectiveness can and should be assessed.We also ran into a common problem with farmer-managed activities, that is, the scarcity of quantitative data.We expected to be able compile data regarding actual selection procedures including population sizes, intensity of selection etc. However in the PPB activities, data are not documented in the same way and with the same detail as breeders do in conventional programmes.Hence the technical analysis remains rather descriptive.For this reason we shifted our attention and looked for documentation that also pays attention to the participation aspect of the experiences.We hope that this document will contribute to a better understanding of what PPB is all about and widens interest, particularly amongst plant breeders and policy makers, in regarding farmers as potential and enthusiastic partners in crop improvement.
Language: English
Domain: Life Sciences
SDG: Zero hunger
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1546692971