Participatory Plant Breeding builds on local knowledge and farmers’ innovation. Photo：Bhuwon Sthapit/LI-BIRD

What is Participatory Plant Breeding？

Participatory Plant Breeding（PPB）is based on the idea that farmers as well as professional plant breeders have important knowledge and skills that could complement one another. PPB is broadly defined here as a range of approaches that involve a mix of actors（including scientists，breeders，farmers and other stakeholders）in plant breeding stages.

Other terminology has been used to describe such approaches，depending on the stage of the breeding process at which collaboration between farmers and formal breeders starts. For example，in Participatory Varietal Selection（PVS）the materials are stabilised，whereas in the narrower sense of Participatory Plant Breeding the material is still segregating. These different approaches are generally subsumed under the term Participatory Plant Breeding（or Participatory Crop Improvement）.

Depending on who controls the breeding process（researchers or farmers）and the scale on which the work is undertaken（community-centred or research to extrapolate results）two broad categories are usually differentiated：“farmer-led” and “formal-led” PPB（Source：PRGA Programme）.