Abstract:
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
