Farmer-Driven Approach to Sorghum Improvement in Burkina Faso.

Sorgho [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] is the major food crop in the rural areas of Burkina Faso. Many improved varieties produce up to 5 t/ha on-station, but farmers do not adopt them readily. Yield in farmers’ fields is only about 1 t/ha, perhaps because of many abiotic and biotic production constraints to farmers’ preferred varieties. The objectives of this study were to (i) investigate farmers’ perception of production constraints, (ii) determine farmers’ varietal trait preferences, and (iii) collect and screen farmers’ germplasm (landraces) for possible sources of abiotic and biotic tolerance/resistance. A total of 265 farmers were involved in a participatory rural appraisal (PRA) survey conducted in 9 Regions of Burkina Faso. The PRA involved focus group discussion and completion of a questionnaire designed with Sphinx lexica version 4.5.30 for data collection on farmers’ cropping systems, sources of seed, variety and trait preferences, cultural practices, and socio-cultural aspects of sorghum production. SPSS version 20 was used to compute the means, variances, convergence and divergence. Farmers (i) indicated drought stress, Striga infestation, and anthracnose disease as the most important production constraints, (ii) use cultural methods to control Striga and anthracnose disease, (iii) prefer organic manure to mineral fertilizers, and (iv) indicated high yield, earliness, white grain color, and grain storability as their preferred varietal traits. The 92 farmers’ varieties collected and evaluated with 28 improved varieties clustered into 17 groups containing both farmers’ accessions and the improved varieties. Farmers’ accessions and the improved varieties were different based on the allele’s data, and the accessions were mainly a mixture of the two basic sorghum races, Caudatum and Guinea.