ABSTRACT
About 85% of Ethiopia's 80 million inhabitants depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. The agricultural sector is largely characterized by small-scale subsistence farming and low productivity. Farmer access to quality seed of better adapted varieties is of utmost importance for increasing productivity (Bishaw et al., 2008). Public research institutes and universities are primarily responsible for plant breeding. Their varieties generally target high-potential agricultural environments and as such are not specifically adapted to the marginal growing conditions with which small-scale farmers most often have to contend. Participatory varietal selection (PVS) is becoming a common tool for identifying which materials should be incorporated into breeding programmes, and which traits should be addressed, as well as for testing materials in farming conditions before release (Ceccarelli et al., 2009).
