1,721,069 research outputs found
The abandonment of maize landraces over the last 50 years in Morelos, Mexico: a tracing study using a multi-level perspective
No full textUnderstanding the causes of maize landrace loss in farmers’ field is essential to design effective conservation strategies. These strategies are necessary to ensure that genetic resources are available in the future. Previous studies have shown that this loss is caused by multiple factors. In this longitudinal study, we used a collection of 93 maize landrace accessions from Morelos, Mexico, and stored at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) Maize Germplasm Bank, to trace back to the original 66 donor families after 50 years and explore the causes for why they abandoned or conserved their seed lots. We used an actor-centered approach, based on interviews and focus group discussions. We adopt a Multi-Level Perspective framework to examine loss as a process, accommodating multiple causes and the interactions among them. We found that the importance of maize landrace cultivation had diminished over the last 50 years in the study area. By 2017, 13 families had conserved a total of 14 seed lots directly descended from the 1967 collection. Focus group participants identified 60 accessions that could still be found in the surrounding municipalities. Our findings showed that multiple interconnected changes in maize cultivation technologies, as well as in maize markets, other crop markets, agricultural and land policies, cultural preferences, urbanization and climate change, have created an unfavorable environment for the conservation of maize landraces. Many of these processes were location- and landrace-specific, and often led to landrace abandonment during the shift from one farmer generation to the next.</p
Bringing farmers back into breeding : experiences with participatory plant breeding and challenges for institutionalisation
No full textSpanish version available in IDRC Digital Library: Nuevo respeto para los agricultores : experiencias en fitomejoramiento participativo y los desafíos para su institucionalizació
Nuevo respeto para los agricultores : experiencias en fitomejoramiento participativo y los desafíos para su institucionalización
No full textRevisión y traducción del inglés: Francisco Guevara con Mariana PérezVersion inglés en la biblioteca: Bringing farmers back into breeding : experiences with participatory plant breeding and challenges for institutionalisatio
Encouraging diversity : the conservation and development of plant genetic resources
No full textProject number related to IDRC support could not be determinedDue to copyright restrictions, this item cannot be share
'Pioneer Farmers' : joint exploration of crop diversity and agroecosystem function in Walsala, Nicaragua
Full text linkExploring the role of crop diversity on the functioning of agroecosystems has significant implications for agriculture. ‘Pioneer farmers’, on Nicaragua’s agricultural frontier are adapting their cropping systems to new agroecological conditions including steep slopes, heavy rainfall and market inaccessibility which characterise the region. Farmers report that integration of a greater diversity of crops has regenerated previously degraded land and improved performance of their agroecosystems. Working in partnership with Bioversity International and local NGOs in Waslala, the role of crop diversity on agroecosystem function was explored together with farmers in their fields, using a participatory joint learning approach. Results show that farmers in Waslala are managing highly diverse systems which enable year-around dietary diversity, food security and income stability. Farmers are using agroecological diversification practices which contribute to key agroecosystem functions such as pest and disease suppression, microclimate regulation and reducing soil erosion. Supporting theories from ecology, farmer’s experiences in Waslala suggest a link between agroecosystem diversity, productivity, stability and resilience. Opportunities to further enhance the use of crop diversity to overcome current and future challenges were also explored with farmers and local stakeholder and potential interventions identified. However, it is important to note that these interactions can be difficult to manage at a farm scale and negative interactions must be traded off with benefits. Diversification is not a solution to all problems for all farmers and some are seeking other strategies. Through joint exploration this study has shed new light on the link between crop diversity and agroecosystem function and led to the co-production of new knowledge. Reflection on this process highlights important considerations for future development of more engaged research processes. As farmers in other parts of the world are facing increasing challenges, experiences in Waslala suggest that agroecological diversification could be a viable option to increase productivity, stability and resilience in the face of change.M-A
Farmers’ use and adaptation of improved climbing bean production practices in the highlands of Uganda
No full textClimbing beans offer potential for sustainable intensification of agriculture, but their cultivation constitutes a relatively complex technology consisting of multiple components or practices. We studied uptake of improved climbing bean production practices (improved variety, input use and management practices) through co-designed demonstrations and farmer-managed adaptation trials with 374 smallholder farmers in eastern and southwestern Uganda. A sub-set of these farmers was monitored one to three seasons after introduction. About 70% of the farmers re-planted climbing beans one season after the adaptation trial, with significant differences between eastern (50%) and southwestern Uganda (80–90%). Only 1% of the farmers used all of the improved practices and 99% adapted the technology. On average, farmers used half of the practices in different combinations, and all farmers used at least one of the practices. Yield variability of the trials was large and on average, trial plots did not yield more than farmers’ own climbing bean plots. Yet, achieved yields did not influence whether farmers continued to cultivate climbing bean in the subsequent season. Uptake of climbing beans varied with household characteristics: poorer farmers cultivated climbing beans more often but used fewer of the best-bet practices; male farmers generally used more practices than female farmers. Planting by poorer farmers resulted in adaptations such as growing climbing beans without fertilizer and with fewer and shorter stakes. Other relationships were often inconsistent and farmers changed practices from season to season. The diversity of farmer responses complicates the development of recommendation domains and warrants the development of a basket of options from which farmers can choose. Our study shows how adoption of technologies consisting of multiple components is a complicated process that is hard to capture through the measurement of an adoption rate at a single point in time
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Making sense of farmers’ demand for seed of root, tuber and banana crops : a systematic review of methods
No full textA demand-driven approach is becoming increasingly central in the efforts to improve agricultural research and development. However, the question of how exactly demand is studied usually remains unstated and is rarely discussed. We therefore carried out a systematic review in order to better understand how farmers’ demand for seed in root, tuber and banana seed systems is studied. The review is based on data from a consultation with an expert panel and a structured literature search in the SCOPUS database. Screening the gathered articles resulted in 46 studies on a global scale, fitting the scope of our investigation. Through qualitative analysis and categorization of these studies, we developed a classification scheme according to the types of approaches applied in the retained studies. One group of studies explicitly articulates farmers’ preferences and choices through surveys or engagements in trials, auctions, choice experiments and interviews. Other studies implicitly articulate farmers’ demand by characterising their current use of varieties and seed. We discuss opportunities and limitations in the use of each type of study and we reflect on the body of available literature as a whole. Our conclusion is that a framework is necessary that purposefully combines the existing different methods and that it is necessary to involve stakeholders in a process where demand is articulated. Together, these two steps would characterise existing demands in a more effective and precise way, thus providing better guidance to decision-makers in their reactions pertaining to seed systems
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