l Changing the system from within: participatory plant breeding and ABS in China 83
Table 1. The development of participatory plant breeding in Guangxi, southwest China
Date
Activities
Results
Phase 1: PPB
(2000 onwards)
• Improve landraces and farmers’
varieties
• Develop locally adapted hybrids
• Build farmers’ capacity
Breeding processes documented and evaluated:
• Guangxi Maize Research Institute (GMRI) –
formal breeder
• 13 communities
• 100+ individual farmers
Phase 2:
Community seed
production
(2005 onwards)
Community-based PPB seed production
as a market-based reward for PPB
farmers conducted by a women’s farmer
group (15 farmers) with technical support
from the GMRI breeders.
Detailed information documented and analysed
for seed production in terms of scale, yield, local
distribution and problems/risks.
Phase 3: ABS
contracts
(2008 onwards)
ABS contracts developed and agreed
between the breeding institute (GMRI)
and 12 farming communities.
Contracts signed 2010.
local farmers. Chinese farmers do not own
their land. Their perception of rights and
property and their intellectual contribution
to seed development are not strongly
embedded in culture – and are actively
discouraged. This creates a barrier for
farmers who seek to become rights
claimants during ABS negotiation
processes.
The PPB programme had to deal with
these uncertainties and contradictions as it
tried to develop ABS mechanisms to benefit farmers through the PPB process.
The PPB programme
The PPB programme began in 2000. It
was initiated and facilitated by a group of
Chinese agricultural policy and social
science researchers at the Centre for
Chinese Agricultural Policy (CCAP) at the
Chinese Academy of Sciences, together
with concerned plant breeders. It was
supported by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the
Ford Foundation. The project team
consisted of: farmer breeding villages in
Guangxi, local extensionists, breeders from
Guangxi Maize Research Institute (GMRI)
and the Institute of Crop Science (ICS)
under the Chinese Academy of Agricultural
Sciences (CAAS), and sociologists from
CCAP. 3 The programme aims to bring
direct benefits to poor maize growers and
conserve genetic diversity by:
• developing improved crop varieties for
farmers, combining formal and local farmers’ genetic resources and knowledge; and
• developing mechanisms for access to
genetic resources and benefit-sharing
(ABS) between breeding institutes and
farming communities.
The PPB team used a process of participatory action research to enable farmers
and breeders to work together to learn
about, explore and test innovative practical
solutions for landrace variety improvement,
seed production and related benefit-sharing mechanisms. The programme
developed in three stages (see Table 1).
From 2000 to 2011, the project gradually
became a programme, expanding from one
to 13 communities and from individual
farmers to farmer groups. The selection of
PPB communities was based on two
aspects: the richness of local genetic
resources, and the willingness of farmer
breeders to take part. For both breeders and
farmers, PPB became an entry point to
3 Their collaboration has been developed through Ph.D. research supported by Wageningen
University, The Netherlands. The financial and intellectual support of our international partners
is gratefully acknowledged.