Farmer participation in barley breeding in Syria, Morocco and Tunisia |
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Authors: | S Ceccarelli S Grando E Bailey A Amri M El-Felah F Nassif S Rezgui A Yahyaoui |
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Institution: | (1) International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), P.O. Box 5466, Aleppo, Syria;(2) Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique de Tunisia (INRAT), Rue Hedi Karray, 2049 Ariana, Tunis, Tunisia;(3) Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA), B.P. 415, Rabat, Morocco;(4) Ecole Superieure d'Agriculture de Mograne, Zaghouan, Tunisia |
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Abstract: | The paper describes experiments on farmer participation in plant breeding conducted in three countries (Morocco, Syria and
Tunisia) on barley, which is the predominant annual rainfed crop in the most marginal areas of these countries. Trials with
different types and number of breeding material were planted both on research stations and in farmers' fields. Selection was
done by professional breeders and farmers and data were gathered on breeders' and farmers' selection criteria and selection
efficiency. The trials reflected the situation of the crop in the three countries, with high yields on station, low yields
in some of the most marginal farmers' fields, and poor correlations between research stations and farmers' fields, as well
as between farmers' fields. Grain yield was by far the most commonly used selection criterion by the farmers. However, farmers
also made a widespread use of selection criteria not normally used by breeders such as grain filling and straw yield, as well
as other characteristics of the straw (color) and of the leaves because of the importance of the crop as source of animal
feed. A major difference between the selection criteria used by breeders and farmers was disease resistance, almost entirely
neglected by the latter. Farmer selection was effective in identifying some of the highest yielding lines in the farmers'
own fields and also in those cases where they performed selection on station. The coincidence between entries selected by
the breeder and the farmers was high in Morocco but very low in Syria and Tunisia. There were substantial differences between
the lines selected by the breeders on station and those selected by farmers in their fields. In Syria, decentralized-participatory
selection was significantly more efficient in identifying the highest yielding entries in farmers' fields than any other selection
strategy. This work demonstrates that it is possible to organize a plant breeding program so that farmers become major actors
in the selection of new cultivars.
This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date. |
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Keywords: | barley farmer participation genotype × environment interaction Hordeum vulgare marginal environments |
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