Potato breeding in the Netherlands: successful collaboration between farmers and commercial breeders.

Access and benefit sharing of plant genetic resources is a crucial but very complex, political and legalistic matter. Does the formal system work for family farmers? As we see in this special issue of Farming Matters, co-produced with Bioversity International, it poses many challenges and Farmers' Rights are rarely implemented in national law. At the same time, farmers around the world are leading successful initiatives for access and benefit sharing. In this special issue of Farming Matters also an article of the Bioimpuls potato breeding project was included: In the Netherlands a new PPB initiative called BioImpuls emerged in 2010, which engages organic potato farmers in a search to develop late blight-resistant vari-eties for the organic sector.

Potatoes and livelihoods in Chencha, southern Ethiopia

peer-reviewedPotato is highly productive crop and can provide a cheap and nutritionally-rich staple food. Its potential as a cash generator and source of food is much under-utilized in many emerging economies. In this paper we study the impact of an intervention that introduced improved potato technologies in Chencha, Ethiopia on the livelihoods of smallholder farmers. We collected information through in-depth interviews in order to explore possible pathways of impact on farmers’ livelihoods; and used this information as the basis for designing a household survey. The results show changes in agronomic practices and consumption; these changes were most pronounced among wealthy farmers who participated in the intervention. Farmers used the additional income from potato in different ways: wealthier farmers improved their houses and increased their livestock, whereas poor farmers mainly invested in furniture, cooking utensils, tools and in developing small businesses like selling and buying cereals, milk and weaving products in the local markets. Some wealthy farmers, who did not participate in the project, also derived some indirect benefits from the intervention. This underscores: i) interventions that promote uniform farming technologies in themselves are not always sufficient to improve the livelihoods of poor farmers, and ii) the need to broaden the scope of interventions so as to take into account the resources available to farmers in different wealth categories, and the diversity of strategies that they employ for improving their livelihoods. Our approach allows to understand and describe the different developmental effects of a single technological intervention on the different aspects of farmers’ livelihoods

Over visies en nieuwe wegen: Casestudies van organisatievormen in de biologische veredeling en zaadproductie

Onderscheid tussen het biologisch dynamisch circuit en het biologisch klassieke circuit. Het begrip circuit is gebruikt om de samenhang van de initiatieven te verduidelijken. We komen tot de conclusie dat de sociale organisatie van veredelingsactiviteiten, de toegepaste en afgewezen technologieën, en de financiële en juridische constructies samenhang vertonen. De samenhang is voor de twee circuits verschillend. Dit verschil hangt samen met verschil in visies van veredelaars, zaaizaadproducenten en financiers binnen de initiatieven en de daaruitvolgende keuzes ten aanzien van de financiering en toe te passen technologieën

Passage and concentration-dependent effects of Indomethacin on tendon derived cells

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAID) are commonly used in the treatment of tendinopathies such as tendonitis and tendinosis. Despite this, little is known of their direct actions on tendon-derived cells. As NSAIDs have been shown to delay healing in a number of mesenchymal tissues we have investigated the direct effects of indomethacin on the proliferation of tendon-derived cells.</p> <p>Results and Discussion</p> <p>The results obtained were dependent on both the type of cells used and the method of measurement. When measured using the Alamar blue assay, a common method for the measurement of cell proliferation and viability, no effect of indomethacin was seen regardless of cell source. It is likely that this lack of effect was due to a paucity of mitochondrial enzymes in tendon cells.</p> <p>However, when cell number was assessed using the methylene blue assay, which is a simple nuclear staining technique, an Indomethacin-induced inhibition of proliferation was seen in primary cells but not in secondary subcultures.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These results suggest that firstly, care must be taken when deciding on methodology used to investigate tendon-derived cells as these cells have a quite different metabolism to other mesenchymal derive cells. Secondly, Indomethacin can inhibit the proliferation of primary tendon derived cells and that secondary subculture selects for a population of cells that is unresponsive to this drug.</p

Seed degeneration of banana planting materials: strategies for improved farmer access to healthy seed

Vegetatively propagated crops suffer from yield loss and reduced stand density and longevity caused by the build‐up of certain pests and pathogens between successive plantings via infected planting material. Here, six seedborne phytosanitary problems of banana are reviewed to evaluate whether a seed degeneration framework is a useful tool to identify approaches to achieve healthier planting materials. Phytoparasitic nematodes and weevils generate gradual declines in yields and in sucker health. Fusarium wilt and banana bunchy top virus cause progressive mat collapse across the field. Symptomless suckers from any mat in infested fields represent a risk of transmitting the disease to a new field. Xanthomonas and ralstonia wilts, due to incomplete systemicity, are intermediate in their threat to yield loss and frequency of transmission in suckers. Losses to banana streak virus are triggered by abiotic stress, although sucker transmission of episomal banana streak virus also contributes. A qualitative equation described here for seed degeneration covers a cycle beginning with the quality and risk factors of the planting material used to plant a new field and ends with the quality and risk factors of the suckers extracted from the field to plant a new field. This review of five planting material multiplication methods commonly used in banana contrasts their differing usefulness to address seed degeneration in the small farm context. It is proposed that initiatives to offset banana seed degeneration should integrate the role of off‐farm actors into decentralized initiatives rather than attempt to duplicate national seed certification frameworks from other true seed or vegetatively propagated crops

Hybrid potato breeding for smallholder farmers in developing countries: four models for public-private collaboration

We explore how the potential of hybrid potato breeding can be harnessed for smallholder farmers in low-income countries, using economic theories developed for the governance of commons (or common-pool goods). Despite the great potential of hybrid potato breeding, it comes with major challenges that need to be overcome by public-private collaboration. We explore the strengths and challenges of four possible models for public-private collaboration of how hybrid potato breeding can be made available for smallholder farmers in low-income countries: the charity model, the pre-competitive research model, the breeding consortium model, and the project model. It should be noted that these four models are not mutually exclusive. The four models show that there are different ways of institutionalising public-private partnerships while each of these models have specific strengths and weaknesses when it comes to ensuring smallholder access to innovation. It can be argued that the project model is most likely to ensue if no concerted action is taken to institutionalise the access to hybrid breeding for smallholder farmers. This exploration of the four models of public-private partnerships can be used as a starting point for the public and private sectors to come together and discuss how they can combine their forces for the benefit of smallholder farmers around the world. We are convinced that the way these models will be operationalised will result in much more complex and nuanced collaborations, and involve other aspects that we have not taken in consideration

The role of Amazonian anthropogenic soils in shifting cultivation: Learning from farmers’ rationales

We evaluated farmers’ rationales to understand their decision making in relation to the use of fertile anthropogenic soils, i.e., Amazonian dark earths (ADE), and for dealing with changes in shifting cultivation in Central Amazonia. We analyzed qualitative information from 196 interviews with farmers in 21 riverine villages along the Madeira River. In order to decide about crop management options to attain their livelihood objectives, farmers rely on an integrated and dynamic understanding of their biophysical and social environment. Farmers associate fallow development with higher crop yields and lower weed pressure, but ADE is always associated with high yields and high weeding requirements. Amazonian dark earths are also seen as an opportunity to grow different crops and/or grow crops in more intensified management systems. However, farmers often maintain simultaneously intensive swiddens on ADE and extensive swiddens on nonanthropogenic soils. Farmers acknowledge numerous changes in their socioeconomic environment that affect their shifting cultivation systems, particularly their growing interaction with market economies and the incorporation of modern agricultural practices. Farmers considered that shifting cultivation systems on ADE tend to be more prone to changes leading to intensification, and we identified cases, e.g., swiddens used for watermelon cultivation, in which market demand led to overintensification and resulted in ADE degradation. This shows that increasing intensification can be a potential threat to ADE and can undermine the importance of these soils for agricultural production, for the conservation of agrobiodiversity, and for local livelihoods. Given that farmers have an integrated knowledge of their context and respond to socioeconomic and agro-ecological changes in their environment, we argue that understanding farmers’ knowledge and rationales is crucial to identify sustainable pathways for the future of ADE and of smallholder agriculture in Amazonia. © 2016 by the author(s)