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Project Highlights - Successful farmers' conference held at ICARDA with over 50 farmers from 7 different countries
- Follow-up visits to farmers in Syria yielded interesting results for the project
- Articles written on the Farmers' Conference in many different places--and picked up by numerous blogs, websites, magazines, newsletters
- Poster on farmers' Conference chosen as one of the 'winning' posters at the CGIAR Science Forum
- See Project Outputs below
Project Overview “As a barley breeder, I have come to appreciate that when you start working with people instead of just focusing on the plants, you remove a lot of barriers to adoption and find out what really is a good variety for the people on the ground.” – Stefania Grando, Project Leader Varietal development is one of the main tools for improving crop production and alleviating poverty in rural areas. However, breeding philosophies and methodologies have produced a gap between the attributes that formally-trained plant breeders look for and those preferred by farmers, leading to poor adoption of most released varieties. Although this gap is being addressed by participatory plant breeding (PPB), the process is being adopted relatively slowly. In addition, other than farmers, PPB primarily involves plant breeders, social scientists and biodiversity conservationists, but a lack of cross-fertilization among these different stakeholders has constrained development of PPB. Objectives
This project will: Document and inform the wider scientific community of farming community knowledge worldwide and its potential for plant breeding.
Demonstrate the importance of recognizing and strengthening such knowledge so processes, products and services are relevant
Stimulate other agricultural institutions to document farmers’ knowledge in the prioritization, development and implementation of research.
Organise an International Farmers’ conference to achieve many of the objectives listed above.
Lead Administrative Center
International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA) Project Leader
Stefania Grando, Barley Breeder, ICARDA (
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) Project Status
Commencement date: August 2007
Planned duration of project: 12 months Download the project proposal Project Outputs
- Farmers Conference photos
- Farmers Conference follow-up visit by KSinR Project Leader
  `````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````` As part of the monitoring and evaluation of the ICARDA Farmers' Conference Pilot Project interviews were carried out with a variety of actors involvedd in the knowledge sharing activities of this Pilot Project. The interviews were conducted during the monitoring and evaluation visit by the KSinR Project Leader to the ICARDA Pilot Project. Interviews have been documented and shared via a number of blog posts as well as 'Interview Sheets' that have been developed. Blog posts include (feel free to visit them and comment):
Interview Sheets include documentation of:
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KS in Research 
WorldFish Storymerical 
Tools and Methods for Sharing Knowledge: The CGIAR's wiki approach
Storymercial How To Guide by WorldFish
