Farmer-participatory vs. conventional market-oriented breeding of inbred crops using phenotypic and genome-enabled approaches: A pea case study

Abstract Participatory plant breeding (PPB) has gained increasing importance in developing countries, but its value for market-oriented breeding programmes of countries with developed agriculture that are committed to pure line selection (as needed to comply with DUS requirements) is unknown. This study aimed to compare PPB vs. conventional plant breeding of pea ( Pisum sativum L.) targeted to organic systems of Italy, exploring phenotypic and genome-enabled selection approaches. Priority values assigned on a 0–5 scale to 14 traits by 18 farmers from Northern and Central Italy and six breeders were used to define weights of farmer and breeder selection indexes. Farmers and breeders attributed outmost importance to a visual acceptability score assigned a few weeks before crop maturity on a 1–9 scale, followed in importance by grain yield and tolerance to lodging. However, breeders and farmers differed ( P r Ac  = 0.77), and high for grain yield ( r Ac  = 0.59). Genomic selection for the farmer acceptability score ranked first in a preliminary comparison of eight genome-enabled or phenotypic selection criteria based on correlations of breeding values with grain yields in independent environments, suggesting its adoption for preliminary screening of genotype sets that are too numerous for field-based evaluation.