Linking Agrobiodiversity, Conservation, and Participatory Crop Improvement.

Participatory research and development implies that the recipients of the products of research take an active role in the research and development processes. This participation can take many forms, starting historically with the farmers being the sole adapters of plants as crops for their fields. Farmers have taken the lead in crop improvement through their various seed and plant propagule selection techniques. As the sophistication of agriculture advanced, specialists evolved with respect to discovering the best seeds and plants for farmers and for the consumers. Professional plant breeding has exploited genetic diversity within crops and molded phenotypes, hence genotypes, to meet the needs of farmers and consumers. Now, most developed countries have a large public and private network of seed purveyors and an influential industry. One of the consequences of the advanced crop development activities has been the reduction of on-farm genetic diversity in the quest for uniformity of crop product to meet consumer demands. Thus native genetic diversity has eroded where improved varieties predominant. In lesser-developed countries many farmer-developed landraces prevail and these are rich resources for future plant breeding elsewhere. This symposium will consider how to enhance incentives for farmers to retain landraces by introduction of critical performance traits while retaining the defining characteristics of landraces. The resulting security of in-situ conservation of genetic resources provides local benefits to the diversity of diets, increased stability of income through development of niche markets, and stabilizing production and overall farm income, both spatially and temporally.