The goals of participatory plant breeding include:
1. Enhancing farmer empowerment: Participatory plant breeding aims to involve farmers in the breeding process, giving them a voice and decision-making power. This helps to empower farmers by recognizing their knowledge, skills, and preferences, and ensuring that their needs are met.
2. Developing locally adapted varieties: Participatory plant breeding focuses on developing crop varieties that are well-suited to local agroecological conditions, including climate, soil, and pest pressures. This helps to improve crop performance and productivity in specific regions, ensuring that farmers have access to varieties that are best suited to their local context.
3. Promoting genetic diversity: Participatory plant breeding aims to conserve and promote genetic diversity within crop populations. By involving farmers in the selection and breeding process, a wider range of genetic traits and characteristics can be maintained and utilized, reducing the risk of genetic erosion and enhancing resilience to environmental challenges.
4. Improving crop quality and nutritional value: Participatory plant breeding can focus on improving the quality and nutritional value of crops, addressing specific traits that are important to farmers and consumers. This can include traits such as taste, texture, cooking qualities, and nutritional content, ensuring that the resulting varieties meet the preferences and needs of end-users.
5. Strengthening local seed systems: Participatory plant breeding aims to strengthen local seed systems by involving farmers in the production, selection, and distribution of improved varieties. This helps to ensure that farmers have access to quality seeds that are adapted to their local conditions, reducing their dependence on external seed sources and commercial seed markets.
6. Enhancing farmer knowledge and skills: Participatory plant breeding provides an opportunity for farmers to learn about plant breeding techniques, seed production, and crop management practices. This helps to build their capacity and knowledge, enabling them to actively participate in the breeding process and make informed decisions about variety selection and improvement.
Overall, the goals of participatory plant breeding are to empower farmers, develop locally adapted varieties, promote genetic diversity, improve crop quality and nutritional value, strengthen local seed systems, and enhance farmer knowledge and skills.