Principles of Plant Genetics and Breeding

464 CHAPTER 26
Disadvantages
1 Genotypes that may perform well under marginal
conditions are discarded during the early part of the
selection process.
2 The cultivar released is adapted to wider regions,
rather than a specific region.
3 Adoption of the new cultivar by farmers is not
guaranteed.
4 New cultivars are needed every so often.
Key features of decentralized participatory breeding
The key features of decentralized participatory plant
breeding include the following:
1 Breeders formulate breeding objectives and initiate
the breeding process at the research station.
2 Early segregating populations are evaluated in the
target environments in which the products would
be used for crop production.
3 Farmers are involved in the breeding process, contributing
their intimate knowledge of the local environment
and the crop.
4 Cultivars are released based upon specific adaptation
to the growing environments.
5 Focus is on adaptation over time (i.e., stability).
Advantages
1 Cultivars released are readily adopted by farmers and
are well adapted to the production environment.
2 Variability that may have been discarded in the early
stages of conventional breeding may be adapted to
specific farmers’ fields.
Decentralized selection, defined as selection in the target environment, has been used by the International Center for Agricultural
Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) in its barley breeding program to avoid the risk of discarding useful lines because of their relatively
poor performance at the research stations. Decentralized selection is a powerful methodology to fit crops to the physical
environment. However, crop breeding based on decentralized selection can still miss its objectives if its products do not fit the
farmers’ specific needs and uses.
Participation of farmers in the initial stages of breeding, when the genetic variability created by the breeders is untapped, will
fully exploit the potential gains from breeding for specific adaptation through decentralized selection by adding farmers’ perceptions
of their own needs and farmers’ knowledge of the crop. Therefore, farmers’ participation has been the ultimate conceptual
consequence of a positive interpretation of genotype × environment interactions, i.e., of breeding for specific adaptation.
At ICARDA, the gradual change from centralized non-participatory to decentralized participatory barley breeding was implemented
in Syria between 1997 and 2003 in three steps. The model and concepts developed during these developments were
gradually applied in Tunisia, Morocco, Eritrea, Yemen, Jordan, and Egypt.
Step 1: selection phase
Industry highlights
An example of participatory plant breeding: barley at ICARDA
S. Ceccarelli and S. Grando
International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) PO Box 5466, Aleppo, Syria
The first was an exploratory step with the main objectives of building human relationships, understanding farmers’ preferences,
measuring farmers’ selection efficiency, developing scoring methodology, and enhancing farmers’ skills. The exploratory work
included the selection of farmers and sites, and the establishment of one common experiment for all participants. The experiment,
described by Ceccarelli et al. (2000, 2003), included 208 plots and was grown in two research stations and nine villages. All possible
combinations of selection were conducted, namely centralized non-participatory (breeders on station), centralized participatory
(farmers on station), decentralized non-participatory (breeders on farm), and decentralized participatory (farmers on farm).
The results indicated that: (i) farmers can handle large number of entries, can take a number of observations during the cropping
season, and develop their own scoring methods; (ii) farmers select for specific adaptation; (ii) for some broad attributes, selection
is mostly driven by environment; (iv) there is more diversity among farmers’ selections in their own fields than among farmers’
selections on research stations, and among breeders’ selections, irrespective of where the selection was conducted; (v) the selection
criteria used by the farmers are nearly the same as those used by the breeders; and (vi) in their own fields, farmers are slightly
more efficient than the breeders in identifying the highest yielding entries, although the breeders are more efficient than the farmers
in selecting in the research station located in a high rainfall area, but less efficient than the farmers in the research station