First Experiences With a Novel Farmer Citizen Science Approach: Crowdsourcing Participatory Variety Selection Through on-Farm Triadic Comparisons of Technologies (Tricot)

Abstract

SUMMARYRapid climatic and socio-economic changes challenge current agricultural R&D capacity. The necessary quantum leap in knowledge generation should build on the innovation capacity of farmers themselves. A novel citizen science methodology, triadic comparisons of technologies or tricot, was implemented in pilot studies in India, East Africa, and Central America. The methodology involves distributing a pool of agricultural technologies in different combinations of three to individual farmers who observe these technologies under farm conditions and compare their performance. Since the combinations of three technologies overlap, statistical methods can piece together the overall performance ranking of the complete pool of technologies. The tricot approach affords wide scaling, as the distribution of trial packages and instruction sessions is relatively easy to execute, farmers do not need to be organized in collaborative groups, and feedback is easy to collect, even by phone. The tricot approach provides interpretable, meaningful results and was widely accepted by farmers. The methodology underwent improvement in data input formats. A number of methodological issues remain: integrating environmental analysis, capturing gender-specific differences, stimulating farmers' motivation, and supporting implementation with an integrated digital platform. Future studies should apply the tricot approach to a wider range of technologies, quantify its potential contribution to climate adaptation, and embed the approach in appropriate institutions and business models, empowering participants and democratizing science.

The accuracy of farmer-generated data in an agricultural citizen science methodology

“…Also, more sophisticated models for preference data can be used (e.g., Fürnkranz and Hüllermeier 2010;Strobl et al 2011). Early experiences with applications of tricot are described by Van Etten et al (2016).…”

“…These volunteers were smallholder farmers participating in tricot-style variety selection for common bean (see Van Etten et al 2016). We assigned to each site a combination of three different varieties drawn from a total set of seven varieties.…”

What are the prospects for citizen science in agriculture? Evidence from three continents on motivation and mobile telephone use of resource-poor farmers

“…The main idea of the initiative is: if farmers have the opportunity to access better information and different varieties, they are better able to choose what is appropriate for their conditions and cope with unpredictable weather [27, 28]. The Seeds for Needs initiative addresses the issue of access to information and seed variety by exposing farmers to more crop varieties and increasing their knowledge about different traits.…”

Plant genetic resources for food and agriculture: opportunities and challenges emerging from the science and information technology revolution

“…Dedeurwaerdere (, p. 369) notes that, the ‘information technology revolution has dramatically expanded the possibilities of distributed coordination …’ in the use of genetic resources. Indeed, the increasing generation and use of big data by farmers themselves (both as inputs into and outputs generated by agronomic decisions) could potentially create a huge reservoir of knowledge about plant performance (including stress tolerance, nutritional quality and overall yield) in a far wider range of climates, soils, and management regimes than could be tested by a single breeder, research team or organisation (Satizábal et al ., ; van Etten et al ., , ). This information, if made available to breeders and biological engineers, has great potential to feed back into further improvement programmes.…”