ABSTRACT
Participatory plant breeding (PPB) must not be restricted to the technical challenges of farmers’ managing and improving the local crop and variety portfolio: to make efforts sustainable, it will need to address the socio-economic and political context – in particular, poverty and lack of empowerment. The main task for those undertaking PPB is to develop an effective, gender sensitive framework for methodologies, activities and tools that can combine the empowerment agenda with activities backed by the technical rigour needed in PPB. Changes in farming have not only redefined the use of Plant Genetic Resources and influenced the relative importance of crops, and of varieties and traits within these crops, but also strongly influenced the livelihoods and challenges of smallholder farmers, and the position of women farmers. In order to preserve local cultures and identities, PPB should focus on enhancing farmers’ knowledge and capacity for innovation of their crop portfolio, rather than on the preservation of specific traditional phenotypes. To that end, farmers implementing Farmer Field Schools on PPB have set their breeding objectives based on their own needs and conditions. They are able to define the traits for improvement and to engage in collaboration with plant breeding institutes. The supportive role of public plant breeding institutes to such initiatives is essential.
