PARTICIPATORY APPROACH FOR VARIETAL IMPROVEMENT - A REVIEW

The G × E interactions is the main reasons for the failure of formal breeding programmes to several small, resource poor farmers. Farmers' participation in selection under their own environmental and agronomic conditions also will speed up the transfer and adoption of new varieties without the involvement of complex and often inefficient mechanisms of variety release, seed certification and production. Farmers involvement in the early stages of a plant breeding programme involves eliciting farmers criteria for ranking alternative materials or contrasting plant characteristics in order of preference, and then searching for parents which order some of the desired traits. However, as farmer participation in the later stages of varietal selection teoos to coincide with seed multiplication of the most promising material, it can be very advantageous for farmers to take over responsibility for adaptive varietal testing, multiplication of the locally adopted materials and dissemination of seed.