Document(s) 4 of 9

Part 3

EXPERIENCES FROM THE FIELD

The six project "stories" that make up this chapter provide an overview of the many agrobiodiversity and PPB projects supported by IDRC over the past decade. They were selected to represent as wide a cross-section of the research as possible in terms of cropping systems, research objectives, types of participation, and methodological scope. As well, the work was carried out by centres affiliated with the CGIAR, by NARS, and by NGOs. In terms of geography, the projects cover Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and Latin America, as well as one global program. Time-wise, they include longer running efforts as well as work initiated more recently. All six initiatives are ongoing. Longer descriptions have been published by IDRC and are available in print and online at www.idrc.ca/seeds.

Participatory barley improvement in North Africa
and the Middle East

Key Research Elements

Cropping system Barley

Objectives (prioritized) Productivity / diversity / empowerment

Participation Researcher-led, collaborative

Social analysis Gender

Policy component Increasingly prominent (research policies, plant breeding,
variety release)

A new way to work with farmers in dry areas

In many parts of North Africa and the Middle East, yields of key crops such as barley (a self-pollinated crop) are chronically low, and crop failures are common. Malnutrition is widespread in the poorest regions, and famine is a constant threat. Conventional breeding programs aimed at improving the crop have had little effect, largely because most farmers refuse to adopt the new varieties.

The conventional approach has been a centralized, top-down approach that pays little regard to the actual conditions that farmers face. What if you decentralized the breeding program, involved farmers right from the start, had breeders and farmers work side by side to learn from each other, and paid close attention to what the farmers told you? Revolutionary perhaps, but it's a revolution that has produced positive results.

In the late 1990s, a team of researchers at the International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) pioneered a new way to work with farmers in the marginal rainfall environments of Morocco, Syria, and Tunisia. Funded by IDRC, Italy, and BMZ/GTZ-Germany, the initiative brought together farmers and breeders with the common goal of fulfilling the needs of people living and working in the harsh conditions of the region.

In Syria, for example, "host farmers" in nine communities were linked with two research stations. These host farmers and their neighbours took care of the trials, which involved experimental lines from the research station and the farmers' own varieties. Farmers and breeders assessed the results independently in successive trials from 1997 to 1999. Several promising new varieties were identified from these trials.

Decentralized selection in farmers' fields avoids the risk of useful lines being discarded because of their relatively poor performance at experimental stations, where conditions are almost certainly more favourable.

It quickly became apparent that the farmers' selection criteria, largely based on environmental factors, were quite different from those used by the national breeding programs. To the surprise of many, the selections made by the farmers were at least as effective as those made by the breeders. Yields increased in areas where plant breeding had not previously been successful. Seeing these results, breeders quickly adopted new ideas and attitudes, becoming supporters of the participatory approach.

Conclusion: earlier plant breeding programs were ineffective on marginal lands because they seldom included among their selection criteria those traits that are important to farmers.

Corollary: decentralized selection in farmers' fields avoids the risk of useful lines being discarded because of their relatively poor performance at experimental stations (where conditions are almost certainly more favourable, through fertilization or irrigation for example). Decentralized selection combined with farmer participation from the initial stages of the breeding process is a powerful methodology to fit crops to specific biophysical and socioeconomic contexts, and to respond to farmers' needs and knowledge.

Addressing farmers' needs and interests

The researchers learned a number of other critical lessons from the project-- among them, the fact that farmers can handle a large number of lines or populations, or both. Most notably, in Syria in phase 2 of the work, the number of lines assessed increased from around 200 up to 400 (Table 1). In fact, farmers warmly welcomed the ability to select among a large number of lines. Some farmers have started to produce seeds of the selected material. These seeds are being shared with other farmers, thereby reducing dependence upon seeds delivered by the breeders. This is leading to a more dynamic breeding process, with new materials regularly being passed from farmer to farmer.

The researchers also noted that women's selection criteria often differed from men's, highlighting the importance of ascertaining when and why they differ. And they noted that farmers became empowered by their involvement in PPB, gaining the confidence to take decisions on crosses as well as on factors such as plot size and the number of locations.

Perhaps of equal importance to the researchers themselves, the project revealed the need for specific training in areas such as experimental design and data analysis suitable for situations where the environment (a farmer's field under farmer's management) cannot be under the scientists' control as it is in the research stations.

Building on success

So successful has been this pioneering approach that farmers have requested breeders to work with them using a similar approach to improve other crops. It has also spread to other countries in the region. ICARDA currently supports PPB programs on barley in Egypt, Eritrea, Jordan, and Yemen. In Bangladesh, Syria, Turkey, and Yemen, the same approach is being applied to research on lentils. Complementary to the PPB efforts, ICARDA has begun participatory research in natural resource management, in particular on sustainable land management in dry areas.

In each country, the success has been repeated. In Yemen, for example, a project that began with just three villages in the northern highlands quickly doubled to include three more villages in the central highlands. And the participatory approach has been used as a model in other projects carried out by the Agricultural Research and Extension Authority (AREA), ICARDA's national partner research organization. Another example: agricultural research authorities in Jordan have started to transform the national barley-breeding program into a decentralized, participatory program, and to extend PPB on bread and durum wheat.

Local agricultural research committees in Latin America

Key Research Elements

Cropping system Beans, maize, cassava, potato, fruits

Objectives (prioritized) Productivity / empowerment / diversity

Participation Farmer-led, collaborative

Social analysis Variable

Policy component Not prominent

Experimenting and learning together

In the North, sending a problem to a committee is too often a means of avoiding action. Not so among the farmers and researchers of Latin America -- here the committee has evolved as a platform for evaluating, adapting, and disseminating new technology. In addition, the committee has become an engine for rural development initiatives such as the formation of credit and marketing groups. Local agricultural research committees, or CIALs to use their Spanish acronym, are springing up all over Latin America, and they are producing results that are surprising the scientists in the formal research system.

The CIALs bring farmers and researchers together in a process of joint experimentation and learning. The concept was developed at the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in Colombia, and it quickly caught on. Today there are about 250 active CIALs across Latin America. They vary in size and characteristics, but they all have one thing in common: they provide a direct link between locally organized farmers and the formal agricultural research systems. IDRC has directly and indirectly supported CIALs in Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras, and Nicaragua.

High on the agenda of most CIALs is evaluation of improved local crop varieties, and testing new varieties for suitability in their location. Many of the alternatives tested by a CIAL originate within the local farming community -- open-pollinated maize for example. Others, such as hybrids, come from the formal research system. Or there may be a mixture of the two. Management of pests, diseases, soil, water, and nutrients are also significant concerns for the committees. The staple food crops -- beans, maize, potato, and cassava -- account for more than 80% of the on-farm research that the committees undertake (Table 2).

Once a network of experienced CIALs has formed in an area, the need for intensive coverage by research and extension services is usually greatly reduced because poor rural communities have successfully assumed the task of testing and adapting technology themselves.

The people of the community choose the CIAL's research topic at an open meeting, basing their decision on criteria such as chances of success, the number and groups of beneficiaries, and the likely costs of the research. Then comes the planning stage, when CIAL and other community members decide on the objectives of the experiment, as well as the treatments and control, the materials and methods to be used, the inputs needed, the data to be collected, and the criteria for evaluating results.

The experiment itself is usually carried out with the help of other members of the community (such as experienced innovators), and once it is completed the CIAL meets with the facilitator (perhaps an agronomist from a local NGO) to evaluate the data collected. In analyzing the results, CIAL members ask "What have we learned?" This stage in the process is especially important when new crops fail or the experiment produces unexpected results.

Finally, the CIAL presents its activities, results, and expenditures at one of the regular open meetings of the community and seeks feedback. The CIAL may also make recommendations based on the results, but it is for the community to decide whether the CIAL should continue with the experiment, switch to a new topic, or even cease its activities altogether. The eight steps in the CIAL experimental process can be represented as a staircase (Figure 2).

Figure 2. The CIAL process "staircase" (source: Ashby et al. 2000)

The Nicaragua experience

That is the CIAL process in theory. In practice the process is usually very dynamic and has both ups and downs. Here's how CIALs came to the mountainous region of Matagalpa, Nicaragua, in 1997. A research team from CIAT, in cooperation with staff from the local Farmer-to-Farmer Program introduced the CIAL to four communities in the Calico River watershed as part of a broader natural resources management research project supported by IDRC and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).

In Wibuse, a very poor community in the upper part of the watershed, a committee of men and women experimented with new bean varieties. In El Jicaro, at the midaltitude level, two committees were formed. One with both men and women members experimented with new varieties of maize and beans. The other, composed entirely of women, experimented with vegetables and the use of organic fertilizers. In Piedras Largas, farther down the watershed, the fourth CIAL also experimented with new bean varieties.

There were several failures caused by adverse weather conditions (including a hurricane), plagues, pests, and crop diseases, combined sometimes with inadequate project management. Despite this, the communities evaluated the overall results positively. In Wibuse and El Jicaro, the CIALs set up an additional bean-lines experiment in the second season, assisted by the Central American bean network PROFRIJOL and two national agricultural research organizations. The experiment compared 90 promising lines and one already released variety from Honduras and attracted the attention of many farmers, who had never seen such a diversity of beans. This diversity promised to give them many more production options than in the past. Also, each farmer would now be able to select from a very much larger menu of new materials. The two CIALs, shared responsibility for the management of the plot in Wibuse, and managed to get staff from the national research organization to the field -- a novelty in the San Dionisio region.

Overall, as the Matagalpa experience demonstrates, the strengths of the CIAL system far outweigh any weaknesses.

The following year, members of the four CIALs, together with the CIAT team, organized a watershed-level meeting to share insights, plan for future activities and identify training and technical support needs. Several farmers from other communities who had heard about the CIALs attended the meeting, and subsequently, a number of them took part in the second national CIAL training course. As a result, four new CIALs were formed in the watershed area, and two of the trainees (one man and one woman) became para-tecnicos, or junior technical staff. These two assisted the newly operating and existing CIALs, and in 1999 helped to establish two more CIALs in the watershed area. There are currently 14 active CIALs in the San Dionisio Region.

Certainly the CIAL process is not perfect. Most CIALs go through up and down periods resulting from turnover in membership, people's involvement with more immediately rewarding projects, and irregular technical support. Involvement for women is sometimes still difficult. In some CIALs, the efforts and activities remain mostly restricted to the group that can best be called "joiners" -- those community-minded individuals who can always be relied upon take part in such activities. But overall, as the Matagalpa experience demonstrates, the strengths of the CIAL system far outweigh any weaknesses.

In Matagalpa, several committees have since moved on to experimenting on a larger scale, addressing new aspects of problems in their communities such as soil fertility. A number of new farmer­leaders have emerged, including several women, and where possible CIALs are linking to each other to exchange ideas and results within the watershed and beyond -- through participation in the annual CIAL meetings in Honduras, for example. They also are building bridges to formal research and technology organizations.

Reshaping agriculture in Cuba

Key Research Elements

Cropping system Beans and maize

Objectives (prioritized) Diversity / productivity / empowerment

Participation Researcher-led, collaborative

Social analysis Gender

Policy component Increasingly prominent (seed policies)

Necessity drives the search for viable alternatives

Something very like the CIALs is also taking shape in Cuba. Called farmer experimental groups (GICs), they are a key element in a project that aims to reshape agriculture on the island.

The tourism industry notwithstanding, agriculture is still the backbone of Cuba's battered economy. One of the consequences of the economic crisis in Cuba is that agricultural production in the country is moving away from an industrialized, export-oriented, monoculture-based model that is dependent on high inputs. Of necessity, agricultural producers are moving to more diversified, low-input production systems that are oriented to local markets. Another consequence of the crisis has been the rapid deterioration of the conventional, centralized system for seed production, improvement, and distribution.

These unlooked for circumstances have combined to open up a space for agricultural researchers and policymakers to turn their attention to alternative seed production, improvement, and distribution practices, as a crucial contribution to the need to build a new agricultural sector in the country.

In 2000, a multidisciplinary group of dynamic researchers (with backgrounds in biology, agronomy, biochemistry, and sociology) at the National Institute for Agricultural Sciences (INCA) began a project designed to improve the yield and quality of the corn and bean crops through a combined effort of increased varietal diversity and strengthened local farmer organizations. The project is expected to make an important contribution to improving Cuba's food security options.

Strengthening the organization of farmers increases their capacity to experiment and innovate and to make stronger demands on the formal agricultural research system.

The aim of this innovative project is to strengthen the agricultural biodiversity base in Cuba, making a more diverse and better quality range of varieties available to farmers, agricultural research institutions, and, in the end, consumers. To achieve these aims, the INCA team has several specific goals in mind. First, they want to gain a better understanding of local farmers' knowledge about the management and flow of corn and bean seeds. At the same time they wish to develop a methodology for selecting corn and bean varieties with the involvement of the GICs. Finally, they will disseminate the results obtained by the GICs with the selection, production, and distribution of improved corn and bean seeds.

A secondary but nonetheless important goal is to improve the research capacity of the various agencies involved -- including INCA, the GICs, seed companies, and university staff -- through learning by doing. The project team also believes that strengthening the organization of farmers increases their capacity to experiment and innovate and to make stronger demands on the formal agricultural research system.

Seed fairs and field days: increasing access to diversity

One method the researchers use to introduce farmers to new or unknown varieties or lines is the seed fair. Fairs are organized by breeders and take place at the INCA station. The fairs have proved to be hugely popular, so much so that farmers quite spontaneously started to organize similar fairs in their own communities. Farmers, breeders, and extension agents rub shoulders at the fairs, assessing varieties, and selecting the ones they like best. The materials are then distributed to farmers for testing on-farm. Breeders assist farmers with the experimental design, but all trials are adapted to the local context.

Results show that women and men farmers have different preferences.

To learn more about farmers' preferences, the project team organizes regular field days, where farmers, both men and women, are interviewed about their preferences. The information gathered is crucial to plant breeders in identifying parental materials and selection criteria. Interestingly, results show that women and men farmers have different preferences. Women farmers select for yield, culinary grain properties, and esthetic features such as colour, shape, and brightness. The men indicate a preference for yield, disease resistance, and pod size. Seeds selected "most liked" are given to the farmers a few weeks after the field day.

Researchers in Cuba have little previous experience with participatory approaches of this kind, so the project team also tends to function as a resource for other researchers who are interested in similar approaches. The team is also involved in genetic analysis through collaboration with biotechnology scientists at the Cuban National Research Institute of Agricultural Sciences.

While Cuba's situation is undoubtedly unique, it is quite possible that a similar collapse of the industrial agricultural sector could occur before too long in other countries of the region, and perhaps beyond. The current agricultural production practices in many countries are highly dependent on expensive technology, and chemical inputs, as well as various kinds of government subsidies, and are simply not sustainable in the long term. Thus, the Cuban experience will likely have relevance elsewhere in the future.

Enriching maize and rice in Nepal

Key Research Elements

Cropping system Rice and maize

Objectives (prioritized) Diversity / productivity / empowerment

Participation Farmer-led, collaborative

Social analysis Gender, ethnicity

Policy component Increasingly prominent (variety release, IPR)

Local crop diversity and rural livelihoods

For all its Himalayan grandeur, Nepal is only slightly larger than the island of Cuba, occupying less than 0.1% of the world's land surface. Yet its mountains and valleys are home to over 2% of the world's flowering plants. In terms of arable land, the country also has a very high population density -- approximately five people per hectare. Most of the people own very small parcels of land, and decreasing fertility combined with land fragmentation (a result of inheritance) have resulted in decreased productivity. In the upland areas the land is marginal at best, and farmers traditionally grow a range of crops in very small plots simply to survive.

It is against this background that a nonprofit NGO called Local Initiatives for Biodiversity, Research and Development (LI-BIRD) works to support sustainable management of renewable natural resources and to improve the livelihoods of people in Nepal. Established in 1995 with its headquarters in the town of Pokhara, 200 km west of Kathmandu, LI-BIRD contributes to conservation and utilization of biodiversity for sustainable development through its participatory research and development initiatives, many of which are supported by IDRC as well as other national and international agencies.

LI-BIRD's activities are wide ranging:

• Strengthening the scientific basis of in situ conservation of agricultural biodiversity on-farm in different agroecological regions;
• Enhancing the contribution of home gardens to on-farm conservation of plant genetic resources to improve the livelihoods of poor farmers;
• Supporting participatory crop improvement programs on major cereal crops in high-yield potential production systems;
• Developing and refining tools and techniques designed to create awareness at the grassroots level -- from diversity fairs and traveling seminars to drama and folk song competitions; and
• Conducting policy research on topics such as a seed regulatory framework, government extension and credit policies, agrobiodiversity policies, and land use management to support informed decision-making by the country's policymakers.

Nepal is rich in the diversity of both cultivated and wild relatives of rice, and is home to as many as 2 000 different landraces. Different rice varieties are grown for different purposes -- such as home use, festivals, selling, honouring guests, and even medicine. Not surprisingly then, many of the projects undertaken by LI-BIRD and supported by IDRC have been concerned with the improvement of rice production through PPB.

Even with no formal dissemination system, crop varieties can spread over long distances, mainly through the personal contacts and networks.

As far back as 1985, current LI-BIRD staff (then employed by the Lumle Agricultural Research Centre) pioneered PPB work through decentralized testing of cold-tolerant rice in the high-altitude mountain village of Chhomrong. Several other participatory rice- and maize-breeding projects followed, carried out in both favourable or higher productivity areas and unfavourable or lower productivity areas. The projects had a mix of goals including productivity increase, biodiversity enhancement, strengthening farmers' breeding skills, and policy changes; as well as specific breeding goals, as outlined in Table 3.

The village of Chhomrong was among the high-altitude communities participating in a project to monitor the spread of rice varieties from PPB programs. Researchers found that even with no formal dissemination system, crop varieties can spread over long distances, mainly through personal contacts and networks. However, this informal system of dissemination is very slow -- typically it is 4 years before farmers exchange or sell new seeds outside their own village. The project highlights the need for an effective method to scale out the process in the interest of the whole community.

Another project studied upland rice, locally known as ghaiya, which is grown under rainfed conditions on flat land, terraces, or hill slopes of newly cleared forests. This crop is mainly grown by poor farmers on unirrigated ancient alluvial river fans call "tars." Ghaiya has considerable importance in the farming system and is preferred to maize both for its food value and its straw for animal feed.

The study found that ghaiya-growing farmers possess a wealth of knowledge in managing their soils to maximize the crop yield. Farmers also demonstrated that mixed cropping ghaiya with maize results in a higher combined yield, and has a practical advantage in that a few rows of maize in the flat tars make it easier to broadcast ghaiya more uniformly. Some farmers, however, prefer to plant maize after ghaiya, saying this helps to maintain soil fertility. Diversity still exists for indigenous ghaiya varieties, although the number of varieties farmers maintained varies according to the size of their land holding -- the larger the holding, the more varieties. In a majority of the areas studied, farmers maintain at least two varieties with different maturity.

In the Pokhara Valley, where rice is grown both as a staple and as a cash crop, another IDRC-supported project studied the rice-growing environments and status of indigenous rainfed and aromatic rice varieties. Farmers here reported more than 75 local landraces, yet only 11 of these were widely cultivated. Seeds of all the landraces have been collected for conservation, study, and possible promotion.

Insights and achievements

Over the years, LI-BIRD's pioneering work in Nepal's various agroecological regions has resulted in important achievements and insights:

• The direct participation of farmers often leads to new breeding objectives; therefore, the methodology should be cyclical and adaptive, not linear and rigid. Biodiversity seed fairs, kits, and community registers are useful tools to encourage farmers' involvement.
• Involving farmers in the planning process results in breeding objectives that are much closer to farmers' perceived needs and interests.
• Within larger, high-productivity regions there exist diverse niche environments associated with different user preferences; different options are needed to address this biophysical and social variety.
• PPB has the potential to increase diversity. It accelerates change by introducing genes and genotypes as key inputs in the ongoing process of in situ conservation of crops.
• There is no blueprint for the right form and amount of participation by women and men farmers in the process. However, defining and agreeing on clear responsibilities is essential to manage or guide the process.

Maize improvement in southwest China

Key Research Elements

Cropping system Maize

Objectives (prioritized) Diversity / productivity / empowerment

Participation Researcher-led, collaborative

Social analysis Gender

Policy component Research policies, plant breeding, seed policies

Bridging the worlds of farmers and scientists

In the remote and harsh uplands of southwest China, farmers must struggle to eke out a living, unlike those fortunate enough to farm in the Northern Plain -- China's "corn belt." Yet this remote region is one of the places in the world where people first began to cultivate maize. Farmers here have cultivated and relied on maize for their survival for countless generations, and they maintain a higher level of maize varietal and genetic diversity than in the rest of the country. Today this region is a treasure trove of maize genetic diversity that is vital to the future of maize cultivation in China.

Maize is now the most important feed crop and the third most important food crop in China. It is the main staple food crop for the rural poor in the upland areas in the southwest. The government of China has followed a modern technology-oriented approach, relying predominantly on its formal seed system. The development and distribution of modern varieties, mainly hybrids, for the three main staples -- rice, wheat, and maize -- has been the core task and the first priority for the formal system to achieve the overall goal of national food security.

Hybrid maize is now grown on approximately 80% of the total maize-production area in China, particularly the uniform and high-potential areas of the Northern Plain. The introduction of a market economy has resulted in an increasingly profit-driven seed production and supply system. Hybrid breeding and hybrid seed production have drawn more attention and investments than ever before. Conversely, a study done in one of the southwest provinces, Guangxi, revealed that more than 80% of the seed supply is from farmers' own seed systems, maintaining diversity for the interests and sustainable livelihoods of all farmers.

The genetic base for maize breeding in China has been dramatically reduced during the last decade. Although the total national maize germplasm collection has around 16 000 entries, 5 dominant hybrid maize varieties now cover 53% of the total maize-growing area in the country. In Guangxi province the total maize germplasm collection has around 2 700 entries; among them, more than 1 700 are landraces from the region. However, the utilization of these collected materials in breeding is very limited. Only 3 main hybrid breeding crosses are used and all the 14 hybrids bred out in the last 20 years share the same inbred line to different degrees. Meanwhile, in several provinces landraces in farmers' fields are degrading and disappearing as a result of the continuing spread of modern varieties.

Although China's economic growth has been impressive, poverty remains persistent in many rural areas including Guangxi province -- in particular affecting women and households headed by women. Rapid growth also goes hand-in-hand with increasing natural resource degradation. Change at the political level comes at a slower pace. Top-down planning and decision-making are still the norm at various levels of government. But even here spaces can be seen to be opening up.

A cooperative and complementary relationship between the two systems is urgently needed to address the challenges in food security and biodiversity facing China today.

This is the background to a research project begun in 1999 by the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy (CCAP) in collaboration with the Guangxi Maize Research Institute (GMRI). The project built on a study financed by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). This study was carried out by a Chinese doctoral student, Yiching Song. In assessing the impact of CIMMYT's maize germplasm on poor farmers in southwest China, she looked in particular at the processes of technology development and diffusion by both the formal and the informal systems.

One of the study's main conclusions is that a cooperative and complementary relationship between the two systems, rather than the current separated and conflicting situation, is urgently needed to address the challenges in food security and biodiversity facing China.

The research project, supported by IDRC and the Ford Foundation, set out to identify and assess ways of developing a mutually beneficial partnership between the formal and informal systems in maize crop development specific to the southwest region. Two key goals:

• to better promote and use the techniques that enable indigenous local communities to conserve biodiversity and
• to find ways to involve those communities in the design and implementation of on-farm biodiversity conservation.

The project team members come from several institutions and groups. They have different disciplinary backgrounds and operate at different levels. Five women farmer groups, six villages, six township extension stations, two formal breeding institutes, and CCAP have been directly involved in both the design of the project and its implementation. Now in its second phase, the project is attempting to link community-based action research with the policy-making process by increasing efforts to engage directly key decision-makers in the maize policy arena at both the provincial and national levels.

The field experiments have proved to be effective in strengthening interaction, communication, and collaboration among the stakeholders.

The field experiments use both a researcher-led and a farmer-led approach with different research focuses in each trial for comparison. More than 40 varieties were identified as target varieties for PPB and PVS trials at the GMRI station and in five villages. From the 40 trial varieties, 3 preferred varieties were selected by farmers for agronomic, cultural, and economic reasons. These varieties have been released and used in the trial villages and in neighbouring villages. In addition, five exotic varieties from CIMMYT have been locally adapted, and five landraces from the trial villages have been improved through the joint efforts of farmers and breeders. An improved variety (in terms of local adaptation and farmer preferences) from women farmers has been tested and certified by the formal breeding institution and is widely used in the project region. Formal breeders have identified some very useful breeding materials and inbred lines that have a very broad genetic base from the landraces in farmers' fields.

There are other benefits. The field experiments have proved to be effective in strengthening interaction, communication, and collaboration among the stakeholders. They have also strengthened the local-level organizational and decision-making capacity of farmers. And among the formal breeders there has been impressive change in attitude -- the needs and interests of farmers are now considered and included in the breeding plan and research priorities of the institutions, and farmers' efforts and knowledge in genetic biodiversity management are increasingly recognized by policymakers at both provincial and national levels.

The success of the project has led GMRI to combine gene bank conservation with in situ conservation of landraces. In addition, the China Crop Science Institute will include the local germplasm conservation efforts in Guangxi in its national plan for broadening the genetic base. Meanwhile, CCAP has played a crucial role in expanding the impact and influence of the results at national policy levels. For example, the project was presented and discussed at a national policy-planning workshop coordinated by CCAP and CIMMYT in Beijing in March 2002. This important conference was the first time that 40 prominent national agricultural policymakers and maize researchers had discussed the participatory approach as an alternative and complementary methodology for crop improvement and agrobiodiversity management.

The global program on Participatory Research and Gender Analysis

Key Research Elements

Cropping system Open-pollinated, cross-pollinated, vegetatively propagated crops

Objectives (prioritized) Productivity / empowerment / diversity

Participation Variable, consultative, and collaborative

Social analysis Variable, gender

Policy component Variable, IPR, seed policies, variety release, research policies

Emphasizing women's roles

Perhaps the most extensive program in support of PPB on a global scale is sponsored by the CGIAR. Called the Program on Participatory Research and Gender Analysis (PRGA), its goal is to "assess and develop methodologies and organizational innovations for gender-sensitive participatory research and to operationalize their use in plant breeding and in crop and natural resource management."

The PRGA is cosponsored by four of the IARCs, and its activities are funded by national governments and several donor institutions, including IDRC. The program's members include NARS, NGOs, and universities around the world. As the name indicates, the PRGA places considerable emphasis on the roles of rural women in managing plant genetic resources.

Women throughout the developing world have detailed knowledge of, and strong preferences for, specific crop traits.

The emphasis on women's roles and needs is a logical outgrowth of 20 years of effort to make science more responsive to poor farmers. Women play many roles -- growing, harvesting, storing, and preparing food. Perhaps none is more important than their role in plant breeding. Women farmers are prolific and adept plant breeders, as well as key managers of natural resources such as soil and water. They domesticate wild species and play a vital part in selecting and storing seeds for future crops. Women throughout the developing world have detailed knowledge of, and strong preferences for, specific crop traits, and studies show that men and women often have markedly different expectations and knowledge of crops -- differences that research and policies need to take into account.

Projects under the global PRGA program support the worldwide development and assessment of gender-sensitive participatory research methods. The goal is to introduce proven approaches into the IARCs and eventually into national programs. Several of the activities already described in this chapter come within the scope of the PRGA. For example, the CIALs in Latin America, the ICARDA barley research in the Middle East, and LI-BIRD's upland research in Nepal. The research teams in China and Cuba have also established links with the PRGA program.

One of the program's key strategies for advancing gender-sensitive PPB is a competitive small grants program. In Peru, for example, a grant enabled women to be involved in selecting new potato clones, giving them greater decision-making power and control over resources. As has been found in other regions, the women's choices were different from those of the men. Participatory approaches applied in Uganda have resulted in men working more with women; in Kenya, they led to increases in the number of women in local management committees.

Although the small grant projects are the PRGA's main arm in the field, the program's staff are also engaged directly in cutting-edge research. For example, conducting a study that addresses the challenging issue of how to attribute intellectual property rights that emerge from collaboration between researchers and farming communities. This work starts to fill a major gap in the international arena, where current agreements draw prime attention to the rights of plant breeders and farmers, but fail to address the division of benefits that could result from collaborative work.

The benefits of participatory research have been documented, but to persuade more scientists and research managers to begin to incorporate these approaches into their research, it is vital to be able to compare the participatory approach to other, more traditional approaches. Program staff have developed and applied tools for empirical impact studies in both PPB and natural resource management. Both impacts and costs were studied, with a particular focus on documenting process impacts of different types of participatory research, as well as the impact of involving farmers at different stages of research.

Initial findings suggest that involving farmers more closely in the research process and giving them more control yields many positive impacts, including increased profits for the farmers. There is also empirical evidence that participatory research reduces costs by helping to prevent the development of technologies that are not subsequently adopted by the intended users. For example, feedback from Indonesian farmers at an early stage of sweet potato research led researchers to modify their proposed technology.

Involving farmers more closely in the research process and giving them more control yields many positive impacts, including increased profits for the farmers.

In a further effort to promote and facilitate the use of participatory approaches, the PRGA has built a network of knowledge and practice including NGOs, NARS, and IARCs. E-mail lists encourage an ongoing worldwide exchange of expertise, while international seminars bring together hundreds of practitioners from around the world. PRGA staff have created three publicly accessible databases with information on projects that use gender-sensitive participatory approaches and have established a network of PRGA liaisons and gender focal points in all the CGIAR centres. In addition, staff have organized and participated in numerous training workshops on participatory research and gender analysis methods and have published several training manuals.

What has been accomplished?

Table 4 summarizes some of the key results obtained in the six projects described above. In Part 4 we will see how these projects and their results fit within the overall scope of IDRC's biodiversity research program.

Document(s) 4 of 9