Topics

The Role of

Participatory Plant Breeding

Mountain environments are facing not only increasing temperatures with climate change but also disruptions to their hydrological cycles resulting in more erratic rainfall that will intensify the already critical state of water scarcity and conflicts over water allocation. The rural poor in indigenous mountain communities will suffer the most from these changes and will necessitate a range of coping strategies to help them adapt to changing climates.

Participatory Plant Breeding (PPB) is being practiced by indigenous mountain communities as an adaptation tool for protection against climate change impacts. PPB is a joint innovation process that involves farmers and scientists in breeding new crop varieties that have improved productivity and resilience and that are tailored to local climatic conditions. Drought and heat-tolerant varieties are developed through plant breeding, contributing to food sovereignty and the conservation of agrobiodiversity.

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During the Stone Village Learning Exchange in 2016, community representatives from China and Peru working in PPB reported that PPB varieties perform much better in mountain environments than uniform hybrid seeds and that PPB varieties are much more productive than hybrid seeds, as hybrid seeds are uniform and are viable only in irrigated, flat land, and not for the complexity of mountain ecosystems. See Stone Village Event Report, pages 5, 6 for additional information.