A simple quantitative method to judge the need of participatory plant breeding programme

Abstract

Participatory plant breeding (PPB) in field crops like rice is gaining rapid attention and importance in modern crop improvement programme to minimize the gap between potential and realized yield in farmers' field. However, as the process is location specific and resource intensive, utility of this method should be tested before investing in such a venture. A group of rice farmers from Terai region of West Bengal were involved in developing a method for justification of initiating a participatory plant breeding programme. Weighted response matrices were constructed according to farmers' and breeders' choices of traits and were further partitioned into more and less important traits. Distance relationship of the matrices revealed that the attribute preferences differ considerably between farmers and breeders, which justify the need of location specific test for PPB. Results indicated moderate deviation between farmers' and breeders selection preferences. Based on the findings, a method is proposed to judge the need of PPB in a specific location.