Adapting crop varieties to environments and clients through decentralized - participatory approach

Since 1990s, participatory approaches have became a driving force for agricultural research and rural development. The participatory approach in crop improvement involves the client-farmer in the cultivar selection or breeding and highly appropriate for increasing food security and improving livelihoods of subsistence farmers in developing countries. This has developed over the past decades as an alternative and complementary breeding approach to formal plant breeding to effectively address the needs of the farmers, especially in marginal or resource poor areas. In pursuit of this concept, this paper discusses the trends, advantages and challenges in this approach highlighting the contemporary evidence of success case studies commissioned by various authorities worldwide. While successful experiences are evident, the potential of such applications are still to be explored. Among the key challenges to the approach, this article pays attentions especially to technical, economic and institutional challenges that need to be overcome to integrate end-users based participatory approaches into the formal plant breeding systems. The paper concludes by describing synergies that can potentially be achieved by linking centralized and decentralized plant breeding models over biotechnological methods.