OUTPUT 5: PARTICIPATORY METHODS FOR CROP IMPROVEMENT
Many farmers grow old varieties or landraces, and hence fail to benefit from the most modern products of plant breeding. One of the main reasons for low cultivation replacement rates is that farmers have inadequate exposure to new cultivars. One way of increasing the speed of adoption of new varieties is for farmers to be given a wide range of novel cultivars to test themselves in their own fields. The method PSP uses is participatory varietal selection (PVS).
PVS is limited, however,to employing the existing variation among cultivars, and sometimes well-accepted cultivars cannot be found. Participatory plant breeding (PPB), in which farmers select from segregating material, is a logical extension to PVS and is desirable when the possibilities of PVS have been exhausted.
The impacts of PSP's research under Output 5 are already tangible. In the case of participatory crop improvement most of the work has been on PVS. Considerable success has been achieved in Nepal and in Gujarat, India and in Ghana.
PPB is longer term than PVS so results are more provisional. However, PPB is more powerful than PVS and impacts with farmers in Nepal and eastern India are large and have been quantified in two impact assessments.
PSP AT A GLANCE
Website Constructed and Maintained by C.M. Stirling.
