Participatory Variety Selection: Increasing Rice Varietal Diversity

AUTHOR: Sangay Tshewang and Mahesh Ghimiray

ABSTRACT

In order to broaden the genetic base of rice crop, two released and four pre-released varieties were evaluated through Participatory Variety Selection (PVS) program in a remote village in west central Bhutan. After field evaluation for three years, farmers have adopted one released and one pre-released variety thereby increasing the rice varietal diversity to four. Now 80% of the farmers cultivate new varieties selected through PVS along with their local variety; the remaining farmers could not adopt due to shortage of land and farm labour. Farmers have a number of criteria for selecting new rive varieties and these traits vary among communities and individual farmers. PVS has the potential of becoming one of best approaches in research and extension especially in remote areas that are resource poor and have limited number of crop varieties.

KEYWORDS:

PVS, improved varieties, local varieties, diversity.

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