This project explored the possible role of collective action among small-scale farmers in managing and maintaining genetic resources in a center of crop diversity. It focused on the local institutions that ensure the supply ...

Soil infertility is a major constraint to food production in the communal areas of Zimbabwe. Smalholders in the region recognize the problems of low soil fertility and have devised ways of coping with them. This study ...

Identifying the appropriate germplasm to be improved is a key component of any participatory breeding effort because of its implications for impacts on social welfare and genetic diversity. This paper describes a method ...

This study uses an approach derived from models of the private and public characteristics of goods to illustrate (1) the overriding importance of variety attributes in farmers' decisions to allocate area among varieties ...

This paper proposes a preliminary conceptual framework designed to support strategic decisions about which crop populations-in a well-defined reference area within a crop's center of diversity-are suitable candidates for ...

Four environments with contrasting potential for agricultural productivity and infrastructure development were identified in Guanajuato State, Mexico, to test hypotheses about the relationship of maize biological diversity ...

Although participatory plant breeding (PPB) is gaining greater acceptance worldwide, the techniques needed to analyze the data from participatory methodologies in the context of plant breeding are still not well known or ...

This paper describes the current state of international plant breeding research and explains why centralized approach to germplasm improvement, so successful in the past, is being transformed by decentralized local breeding ...

This paper explores social arrangements associated with seed transactions among smallscale maize farmers in the Central Valleys of Oaxaca, Mexico, a centre of crop genetic diversity. A formal seed distribution system has ...

Interest is increasing worldwide in on-farm conservation as a component of a strategy to conserve crop genetic resources. On-farm conservation may require outside support to small-scale farmers in areas of crop domestication ...