Participatory Approaches for Varietal Improvement, Itas Significances and Challenges in Ethiopia and Some Other Countries: A Review

Abstract

Participatory approaches such as participatory plant breeding (PPB) and participatory varietal selection (PVS) have become a motivating force for agricultural research and rural development. These approaches have been developed over the past decades as an alternative to centralised breeding methods designed to better incorporate the perspective of end users into the varietal development process to efficiently address the desires of the farmers for increasing food security and improving livelihoods of farmers, especially in resource poor areas. In search of this concept, this review paper discusses the concepts, advantages, experiences, impact and challenges in these participatory approaches stressing the existing evidence of success by various authorities from different countries. In PPB, farmers are actively involved in the breeding process, from setting goals to selecting variable, early generation material. In PVS, farmers are given a wide range of new cultivars to test for themselves in their own fields. In some of the crops the genotypes selected by the breeder and farmers were almost similar but some differences existed. Since participatory approaches include research and extension methods to deploy genetic materials at on farm experiment so that the variety developed through PPB and PVS remarkably increased varietal diversity that can meet demand of different stakeholders. It could be concluded that, the benefits of participatory research approach includes development of farmers’ ownership of new technologies being tested and transferred; increasing degree of farmers’ awareness, increase varietal diversity and mobilization of farmers’ indigenous knowledge available within local communities for research and development planning and empowerment. Various authors’ indicated that participatory approach is a dominant way to involve farmers for selecting and testing new cultivars that are adapted to their needs, systems and environments. Therefore, for susta