Increasing the Client Orientation of Maize Breeding Using Farmer Participation in Eastern India

Abstract

A maize-breeding programme was targeted at resource-poor farmers of eastern India using a client-oriented approach (often called participatory plant breeding). Farmers tested a range of varieties in a participatory varietal selection programme but none proved to be very popular. Information from these trials was used in a breeding programme to develop a broadly-based population from three yellow- and three white-grained maize varieties that were either identified in the trials or had traits liked by farmers. The population was subjected to several cycles of random mating. In the C3, C4 and C6 cycles, subpopulations were extracted and subjected to mass selection over several generations in environments that represented well the target population of environments of resource-poor farmers' fields in eastern India for traits identified by farmers. To identify better the required traits, in some generations the selection was carried out by farmers on a research farm under fertility levels that approximated farmers' practice. The improvement of the subpopulations resulted in several varieties that performed well in research station and on-farm trials. One of them, BVM 2, was released in Jharkhand state, India. In multilocational research station trials, it yielded more than the control variety BM 1 but silked earlier. In the less favourable environments of on-farm trials, its yield superiority, in percentage terms, was higher. Farmers perceived BVM 2 to have better grain quality and stover yield than the local varieties. BVM 2 was specifically bred to meet the needs of the clients (resource-poor farmers with no access to irrigation) and has earlier maturity combined with higher grain yield. The returns were higher from this highly client-oriented approach, than by classical breeding, mainly because uptake was faster as a result of research and extension being done in tandem.

Participatory Plant Quality Breeding: An Ancient Art Revisited by Knowledge Sharing. The Portuguese Experience

“…In the case of maize breeding, very effective PPB projects are reported all over the world. This is the case of the Andean region (Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia) [21], Brazil [22,23], China [24], Ethiopia [25], Ghana [26], India [27,28], Kenya [29], Mexico and Honduras [30], Nepal [31] and in Nigeria [32]. In Portugal, a very successful long running PPB project in maize (the VASO project, Vale do Sousa -Sousa Valley) is on going since 1984 [33].…”

Recurrent Selection and Participatory Plant Breeding for Improvement of Two Organic Open-Pollinated Sweet Corn (Zea mays L.) Populations

“…This breeding method attempted to maximize the speed of improvement of recessive quantitative traits such as eating quality given the logistical difficulty of controlling pollinations by hand on-farm. It is important to note that multiple examples of PPB selection schemes for maize exist, including mass selection, full-sib recurrent selection, half-sib recurrent selection, and recurrent selection on self pollinated families [21,22,[40][41][42]. The choice of breeding methods depends on both the goals of the project and the resources available to the participants.…”

Plant breeding can be made more efficient by having fewer, better crosses

“…In maize, the parallel of a few-cross approach is to make only a single composite population and we tested this in western and eastern India. Two populations were made, one for each region, and both have produced a released variety [25,26]. …”