Participatory breeding, an approach for sustainable production of new rice cultivars in Iran

Over the past 50 years, thousands of rice varieties have been introduced by plant breeders to agricultural communities all over the world. Despite the improvement of attributes such as grain yield and tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses, a significant portion of farmers still prefer local varieties over the improved cultivars. The main reasons for this perference are the absence of a direct relationship between farmers and plant breeders, the lack of knowledge about the needs and preference of agricultural societies, the differences in crop growth conditions at agricultural research stations and marginal farmerschr('39') fields, and the different agroecological conditions among target agro-ecological regions. In addition, local varieties have high quality and stable grain yield under different conditions and over cropping seasons. Over the past two decades, the concept of participatory plant breeding (PPB) has been developed in collaboration with crop breeders, farmers, traders and consumers to improve the system of introducing new crop varieties. In this approach, there is a direct relationship between farmers/stakeholders and plant breeders. The released cultivars using participatory plant breeding programs, have higher grain yield and dyield stability, and increase farmers’ income. In addition, they enhance genetic diversity and accelrate the adoption process of new cultivars by farmers. Participatory breeding programs in close collaboration with farmers/stakehilders can be very useful, and may cahne the future of conventional breeding programs. Relaesing two new rice improved cultivars (Gilaneh in 2016 and Anam in 2019) with farmers participatory is an example of the rice breeding success story of participatory rice breeding program in Iran.