ABSTRACT
Participatory plant breeding (PPB) in Honduras is a collaborative undertaking between farmers organized in research teams known by the Spanish acronym, CIALs, two local non-governmental organizations, and formal-sector plant-breeders at the Pan-American Agricultural School. Since 2000, this collaboration has produced 22 new bean varieties that serve the needs of the country’s rural population – mostly impoverished hillside farmers who have long experienced endemic food insecurity. However, PPB has been resisted by the government’s agricultural research bureaucracy, which controls the release of new varieties and of associated seed, despite the bottleneck that this control produces for public access to basic food grains. The private sector is challenging this centralization bottleneck as it seeks to expand domestic and international bean markets. It has thereby become a champion of decentralized PPB in Honduras, engendering an unusual alliance between the poorest farmers and those of the country’s agro-industrialists. The chapter details the development of farmer research teams in Honduras, including the rise of women farmer researchers, narrative accounts of collaboration in participatory bean research leading to local release of three new bean varieties, and the struggle for formal recognition of PPB varieties and associated seed.
