"Engaging farmers and their families in all stages of the global effort to make agricultural systems more sustainable and productive is a vital prerequisite to success. This timely and remarkable book focuses on collaborations between farmers and plant breeders across all types of agroecosystems, and offers real hope for widespread redesign and transformation." - Jules Pretty, University of Essex, UK
"Addressing the Grand Challenges faced by agriculture under a global changing climate requires a highly client-oriented, participatory research-for-development approach. This book provides insights on, and lessons learnt from ‘citizen science’ for both decentralized plant breeding and on-farm variety testing. It further shows how genetic diversity may remain in agro-ecosystems by involving the farming community in crop betterment and deployment. This publication also highlights the hurdles to overcome when pursuing participatory plant breeding. Its analytical and clearly written text along with the examples given by various authors in each chapter demonstrates the advantages of this citizen science approach for variety replacement elsewhere." - Rodomiro Ortiz, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden
"This book will be of interest not only to researchers working directly on crop improvement, but also to policy makers and other professionals involved in food and nutritional security. The authors amalgamate knowledge from decades of farmers’ participation in plant breeding, as a major component of improving various crops around the world. For generations, farmers have been advancing their varieties through on-farm mass selections while also conserving seeds. Therefore, it is highly prudent to enhance the partnership between farmers and plant breeders. The publication contributes to this goal by providing insight into approaches, concerns, new perspectives and legal contexts for effective farmer-breeder collaborations." - Segenet Kelemu, International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology, Kenya
"Engaging farmers and their families in all stages of the global effort to make agricultural systems more sustainable and productive is a vital prerequisite to success. This timely and remarkable book focuses on collaborations between farmers and plant breeders across all types of agroecosystems, and offers real hope for widespread redesign and transformation." - Jules Pretty, University of Essex, UK
"Addressing the Grand Challenges faced by agriculture under a global changing climate requires a highly client-oriented, participatory research-for-development approach. This book provides insights on, and lessons learnt from ‘citizen science’ for both decentralized plant breeding and on-farm variety testing. It further shows how genetic diversity may remain in agro-ecosystems by involving the farming community in crop betterment and deployment. This publication also highlights the hurdles to overcome when pursuing participatory plant breeding. Its analytical and clearly written text along with the examples given by various authors in each chapter demonstrates the advantages of this citizen science approach for variety replacement elsewhere." - Rodomiro Ortiz, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
"This book will be of interest not only to researchers working directly on crop improvement, but also to policy makers and other professionals involved in food and nutritional security. The authors amalgamate knowledge from decades of farmers’ participation in plant breeding, as a major component of improving various crops around the world. For generations, farmers have been advancing their varieties through on-farm mass selections while also conserving seeds. Therefore, it is highly prudent to enhance the partnership between farmers and plant breeders. The publication contributes to this goal by providing insight into approaches, concerns, new perspectives and legal contexts for effective farmer-breeder collaborations." - Segenet Kelemu, International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology, Kenya