Participatory plant breeding (PPB) is based on the decentralization of selection in farmers’ fields and their involvement in decision-making at all steps of the breeding scheme. Despite the evidence of its benefits to develop population varieties adapted to diversified and local practices and conditions, such as organic farming, PPB is still not widely used. There is a need to share more broadly how the different programs have overcome scientific, practical, and organizational issues and produced a large number of positive outcomes. Here, is reported on a PPB program that started on bread wheat in France in 2006 and has achieved a range of outcomes, from the emergence of new organization among actors, to specific experimental designs and statistical methods developed, and to populations varieties developed and cultivated by farmers. In this paper is presented the results of a two-year agronomic evaluation of the first population varieties developed within this PPB program compared to two commercial varieties currently grown in organic agriculture
Although many agronomic researchers currently focus on designing and developing decision support systems, they rarely discuss the methodological implications of such work. In this paper, with the examples of two decision support systems, we propose methodological elements for conducting the...
Industrial agriculture and its requirement for standardized approaches is driving the world towards a global food system, shrinking the role of farmers and shifting decision-making power. On the contrary, a holistic perspective towards a new food-system design could meet the...
This paper explores the potential of the multi-strata design used in edible forest gardens based on studies during the establishment of edible forest gardens (the first four years) in the agricultural settings of a group of participating farms in Sweden....
Citizen science is the involvement of citizens, such as farmers, in the research process. Citizen science has become increasingly popular recently, supported by the proliferation of mobile communication technologies such as smartphones. However, citizen science methodologies have not yet been...
To give more attention to the normative character of sustainable development, the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature, and Food Quality requested for a participatory approach to evaluate Dutch agriculture, which was characterized by stakeholder workshops, dialogue, and learning. This article...