Varietal Choice for Food Security

There is growing interest in participatory varietal §selection and participatory client-oriented breeding §to improve the relevance of crop varieties to all §the clients. These approaches are significant §departure from the conventional breeding methods. §With increasing acceptance and popularity of these §approaches, there is a need for academic literature §to best use and promote participatory approaches in §crop breeding, variety testing and scaling up seed §system strengthening. This book provides practical §examples of using participatory crop improvement §approaches to diverse biophysical and socio-economic §environments both in high potential production §systems as well as complex diverse and risk-prone §areas. Examples of faster spread and adoption of §crop varieties by working directly with farmers are §provided. Impact of products of varieties bred by §participatory approaches on food security and §genetic diversity are also analysed. The ways of §strengthening the farmers seed system are also §suggested