Participatory plant breeding (PPB) has received much attention in recent decades for its ability to develop varieties adapted to the diversity of farm conditions and to farmers’ needs and practices. ...Specific methodological issues arise when working with on-farm experiments, one being the implementation of an experimental design that matches farmers’ constraints and objectives, while allowing for accurate statistical analyses of the data. We took the example of a French PPB case on bread wheat, in which farmers, facilitators and researchers have co-constructed an experimental design that meets their needs, but is very unbalanced and required the development of Bayesian statistical models to compare populations on-farm, over environments and analyze their sensitivity to environments. Through a simulation study, we investigated the effects of different characteristics of the experimental design on the behavior of two of these Bayesian models to identify the range of values that are most appropriate and give recommendations for decentralized experiments. We analyzed the estimates obtained by the models using different simulated datasets that differed by the values of the experimental design’s parameters. While within-environment population effects were well estimated even with few replicated controls, replicating populations of interest rather than controls within environments and including enough environments provided more power to detect significant differences. Population effects and sensitivities over environments were mainly impacted by the number of replications of populations across environments, therefore effort should be made to repeat populations in more environments if the aim is to characterize their behavior under various environmental conditions.
Wheat is a staple food in many diets and is currently cultivated worldwide. It provides a large proportion of the daily energy intake and contributes to food balance. Changes in agro-industrial ...practices in the bread sector, from the field to bread-making, have led to an increase in chronic diseases and nutritional deficits, emphasizing the link between food and health. Several levers could be used to improve the nutritional quality of bread wheat. Organic farming, by avoiding the use of pesticides, might allow for greater consumption of wholegrain products. Breeding wheat cultivars with an enhanced mineral content may serve as another lever. In this context, the on-farm participatory plant-breeding of highly diversified varieties could provide promising resources. This study investigated the sensory and nutritional quality of nine population varieties resulting from a ten-year participatory plant-breeding process compared to two commercial pure-line varieties. Analysis of variance showed genotype effects for Mg and Zn concentration, so breeding for a high Mg and Zn concentration can reasonably be envisaged. Moreover, a positive correlation was found between plant height, peduncle height (distance between the Last Leaf and Spike (LLSD)) and nutrient content. Finally, as population varieties express more differences in their profile when grown in less fertile soils, these results emphasize the benefits of genetic diversity for diverse nutritional intake and sensory properties.
Agroecology calls for a global approach, integrating scientific, practical, and advocacy dimensions, to redesign agricultural systems based on ecological and socio-cultural processes and emphasizing ...biodiversity. This review is grounded on the results of DIVERSIFOOD, a European H2020 multi-actor research project, and explores the concept of cultivated diversity using various dimensions relevant to foster sustainable organic food systems and agro-ecological transition. From the evaluation of underutilized genetic resources and forgotten crops, DIVERSIFOOD has proposed plant breeding strategies, on-farm experimentation, and statistical tools to create new populations, landraces, and organic cultivars with intra-varietal diversity. The added value of Community Seed Banks and forms of collective seed management in Europe have been described in terms of goals and activities, and their value for improving seed regulations, treaties, and genetic resources management is discussed. In the context of the current agro-food system characterized by standardization, DIVERSIFOOD raised awareness of qualities of ‘biodiverse food systems’ in which all actors have a role to play. It highlighted the critical capacity to preserve a diversity of cultural values embodied in ‘biodiverse products’, thereby involving consumers in collective strategies for reviving diversity, and empowering all actors of organic food systems to really and efficiently implement research within their farms and networks.
Modern agricultural systems rely on reduced crop genetic diversity, due in particular to the use of homogeneous elite varieties grown in large areas. However, genetic diversity within fields is a ...lever for a more sustainable production, allowing greater stability and resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses. In France, a Participatory Plant Breeding (PPB) project on bread wheat, involving farmers, facilitators and researchers, has led to the development of heterogeneous populations whose within-variety genetic diversity is expected to confer the ability to adapt to farmers’ practices and environments. We studied the stability and local adaptation of ten of these farmers’ populations as well as two commercial varieties in relation to their within-variety genetic diversity. Although no clear evidence of local adaptation was detected, we found that populations’ grain yield and protein content were more stable over space and time respectively than those of commercial varieties. Moreover, the varieties’ stability over time in terms of protein content was positively correlated with within-variety genetic diversity with no significant drawback on protein yield. These results demonstrate the wide adaptive potential of PPB populations, highlighting the importance of seed exchange networks for agrobiodiversity management and use. They emphasize the benefits of genetic diversity for stability over time, which is of great interest to farmers.
The industrialization of farming has significantly threatened cultivated biodiversity. Participatory breeding endeavours to overcome this issue by enabling farmers to select a wide range of crop ...varieties in different conditions, and to foster genetic mixing through seed exchanges, crosses or mixtures. This necessitates the design of new forms of coordination and organization for the farmers and partners involved. This article reports on an ongoing initiative, aiming to facilitate the participatory design of such forms of coordination and organization. It first outlines the method used (Knowledge–Concept–Proposals or KCP), and how it has been tailored to this highly decentralized context involving politically engaged actors on a quest for autonomy. It then presents the exploratory results of the first two workshops: these include group consolidation, the sharing of heterogeneous knowledge, the generation of innovative ideas, and the elaboration of preliminary projects. Finally, this empirical case is compared with other initiatives supporting the participatory design of natural resource management strategies and tools. Its key original dimensions and benefits are that the workshop protocol is replicable, the data produced can be easily exploited, and it allows for testing hypotheses in the field of design science.
Participatory plant breeding (PPB) is based on the decentralization of selection in farmers’ fields and their involvement in decision-making at all steps of the breeding scheme. Despite the evidence ...of its benefits to develop population varieties adapted to diversified and local practices and conditions, such as organic farming, PPB is still not widely used. There is a need to share more broadly how the different programs have overcome scientific, practical, and organizational issues and produced a large number of positive outcomes. Here, we report on a PPB program that started on bread wheat in France in 2006 and has achieved a range of outcomes, from the emergence of new organization among actors, to specific experimental designs and statistical methods developed, and to populations varieties developed and cultivated by farmers. We present the results of a two-year agronomic evaluation of the first population varieties developed within this PPB program compared to two commercial varieties currently grown in organic agriculture. We found that several PPB varieties were of great agronomic interest, combining relatively good performance even under the most favorable conditions of organic agriculture and good robustness, i.e., the ability to maintain productivity under more constraining conditions. The PPB varieties also tended to show a good temporal dynamic stability and appeared promising for the farmers involved.
In 2005, researchers from the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (Institut national de recherche pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement, INRAE) ...started a collaboration with the French farmers' seed network Réseau Semences Paysannes (RSP) on bread wheat participatory breeding (PPB). The aims were: (1) to study on-farm management of crop diversity, (2) to develop population-varieties adapted to organic and low-inputs agriculture, (3) to co-develop tools and methods adapted to on-farm experiments. In this project, researchers and farmers' organizations needed to map the history and life cycle of the population-varieties using network formalism to represent relationships between seed lots. All this information had to be centralized and stored in a database.
We describe here SHiNeMaS (Seeds History and Network Management System) a web tool database. SHiNeMaS aims to provide useful interfaces to track seed lot history and related data (phenotyping, environment, cultural practices). Although SHiNeMaS has been developed in the context of a bread wheat participatory breeding program, the database has been designed to manage any kind and even multiple cultivated plant species. SHiNeMaS is available under Affero GPL licence and uses free technologies such as the Python language, Django framework or PostgreSQL database management system (DBMS).
We developed SHiNeMaS, a web tool database, dedicated to the management of the history of seed lots and related data like phenotyping, environmental information and cultural practices. SHiNeMaS has been used in production in our laboratory for 5 years and farmers' organizations facilitators manage their own information in the system.
Spatiotemporal variations of natural selection may influence the evolution of various features of organisms such as local adaptation or specialisation. This article develops a method for inferring ...how selection varies between locations and between generations from phenotypic data. It is assumed that generations are non-overlapping and that individuals reproduce by selfing or asexually. A quantitative genetics model taking account of the effects of stabilising natural selection, the environment and mutation on phenotypic means and variances is developed. Explicit results on the evolution of populations are derived and used to develop a Bayesian inference method. The latter is applied to simulated data and to data from a wheat participatory plant breeding programme. It has some ability to infer evolutionary parameters, but estimates may be sensitive to prior distributions, for example when phenotypic time series are short and when environmental effects are large. In such cases, sensitivity to prior distributions may be reported or more data may be collected.
Innovation is central to the strategic orientations of many agronomic research institutes. Little attention has been paid, however, to the links between knowledge production and design processes, ...defined as processes resulting in the creation of new objects in pursuit of specific goals. Our aim was to analyze the conditions and specificities of the production of scientific knowledge on agro-ecosystems through design processes. Drawing on design theory, we carried out a cross-analysis of nine research projects that included design processes and produced innovative objects (for example blending rules for variety mixtures in low-input crop management routes). These projects were managed by researchers from a range of disciplines (agronomists, geneticists, crop physiologists, and ecologists), and varied in their duration (from three to 15 years) and scale (from plot to landscape). We combined semi-structured interviews with these researchers and the analysis of various documents (scientific papers, PhD theses, technical publications, and research projects or reports). Our findings show that in all case studies, original and general scientific knowledge on agro-ecosystem functioning was produced at various stages throughout the design processes. The originality of this knowledge lies with the new representations that emerged, either of the agro-ecosystem processes at stake, or of farmers' practices. We show that these representations were formed gradually, through successive iterations of both refined formulations of the design target and new knowledge produced, required for its design. Finally, our results highlight the role of confrontation with real-life situations (particularly through agronomic diagnosis or experiments) in the evolution of these representations. Engaging in design processes can thus be seen as a research practice that leads to the production of original knowledge, allowing for a greater diversity of actors' ways of knowing to be taken into account.
•In nine agricultural research projects studied, design processes led to the production of scientific knowledge.•The knowledge produced through design processes partly contrasted with dominant knowledge in the scientific field.•The design targets, the representations of agro-ecosystems, and the targeted knowledge have evolved together.•We revealed three types of drivers for such co-evolutions, pertaining to various diagnosis and experimentation practices.
Dans les années 2000, des agriculteurs désireux de cultiver des blés correspondant à leurs besoins et soucieux d’affirmer leur autonomie vis-à-vis de l’industrie semencière, ont entrepris de relancer ...la sélection paysanne à la ferme. Des collaborations ont été tissées avec des généticiens de l’Inra, et se sont progressivement développées dans le cadre de projets financés. Or les financements de recherche impliquent une formalisation des partenariats, des engagements en termes de résultats académiques et une augmentation significative de la taille des projets. Dans ce nouveau contexte, comment préserver les valeurs d’émancipation paysanne et de justice cognitive sur lesquelles la collaboration paysans-chercheurs s’est originellement construite ? Cet article aborde la façon dont ce défi se pose concrètement aux acteurs de ces projets, et les précautions qu’ils mettent en œuvre pour y faire face.
In the 2000s, a handful of farmers in France undertook to revive a practice fallen into disuse during agricultural modernization, i.e. on-farm plant breeding. Their motives were both to grow wheat varieties meeting their needs and to assert their independence towards the seed industry. Informal collaborations were woven with geneticists from the French institute for agronomic research (INRA), and developed further within the framework of funded projects. The foundations of a “decentralized participatory plant breeding” were then laid, both on a genetic rationale (breeding directly in the environments where the plants are to be grown) and on strong ethical principles (organizing non-hierarchical relations to let farmers question researchers’ assumptions). However, research funding involves a formalization of partnerships, commitments in terms of academic deliverables, and a significant increase in the size of projects. In this new context, how are the objectives of farmers’ empowerment and the values of cognitive justice on which the collaboration between farmers and researchers was originally built to be preserved? This article describes how this issue is actually tackled by the participants in these projects. We focus in particular on the debates raised by the creation of a database, and on the tensions it generates between centralization and decentralization. We also present the challenges raised by the dramatic increase in the number of participants, which risks to reproduce a division of tasks between researchers, farmers, and the people coordinating at a local level.
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