Participatory Research: Does it Work? Evidence from Participatory Plant Breeding

Participatory research approaches that involve clients in the process of enquiry are widely practised today in many different branches of agriculture ranging from integrated pest management to applied biotechnology. This paper focuses on participatory plant breeding to show how participatory research increases benefits and is more effective at reaching women and the poor. Used in plant breeding, PR is seen to improve research efficiency and leads to more acceptable varieties thus accelerating adoption. This is probably the most compelling incentive for researchers to use this approach. Although often charaterized as expensive, PR also leads to changes in costs that do not lower breeding program cost benefit ratios and may improve these. The paper shows that a careful choice of research goals, targeting of environments and selection of user communities is required in order for PR to have an impact. Also a systematic understanding of different types of participation is needed to select appropriate PR techniques and tools. The paper concludes that PR or client-driven research when used appropriately and expertly, is a proven complement to conventional non-participatory research approaches.

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