A crowdsourcing approach to detect farmers’ preferences: evidences from Ethiopia for adapting to climate change

Climate change is severely affecting production systems all over Africa. Ethiopia will face an increase in temperature and changes in rainfall patterns. One solution for long term management of climate related risks is to introduce new traits into production systems. We present an approach to quickly deliver to farmers a selected number of preferred accessions of durum wheat using a crowdsourcing approach. After having completed a phenotypic and genotypic characterisation of 400 accessions of Ethiopian landraces and asked farmers to evaluate them, we distributed seeds of preferred varieties to a large number of farmers using a crowdsourcing approach. In two sites representing different agroecological zones, we distributed 20 superior varieties and one check, an improved variety very common in both areas to 200 farmers in 12 villages per site, covering an area of roughly 350 km 2. We repeated the experiment for 2 years. Each farmer was given 3 blind varieties and the check, each variety being equally represented in the sample. In addition, in each village we included 2 i-buttons, measuring temperature and humidity every 3 hours throughout the growing season. This allowed to analyse the data on critical climatic parameters. Results clearly indicate farmers’ preferences: a) Landraces were preferred over improved varieties for their multiple uses; b) By considering farmers as citizen scientists, we have a better understanding of the criteria farmers use to select their preferred varieties (in our case straw and grain yield, drought tolerance, uniformity, long and dense spikes). In conclusion: • This process has been very effective in quickly disseminating seeds that match farmers’ needs. After 2 years several hundred farmers can use better adapted material. • It shows the potential of landraces to provide immediate option for managing climate related risks and calls for broader use of material conserved in gene banks. • It indicates the need to strengthen local seed systems to better manage these resources. • It indicates how farmers can provide very valuable scientific information that can be translated into research as well as development potential in other areas of research

Crop variety management for climate adaptation supported by citizen science

Crop adaptation to climate change requires accelerated crop variety introduction accompanied by recommendations to help farmers match the best variety with their field contexts. Existing approaches to generate these recommendations lack scalability and predictivity in marginal production environments. We tested if crowdsourced citizen science can address this challenge, producing empirical data across geographic space that, in aggregate, can characterize varietal climatic responses. We present the results of 12,409 farmer-managed experimental plots of common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) in Nicaragua, durum wheat (Triticum durum Desf.) in Ethiopia, and bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) in India. Farmers collaborated as citizen scientists, each ranking the performance of three varieties randomly assigned from a larger set. We show that the approach can register known specific effects of climate variation on varietal performance. The prediction of variety performance from seasonal climatic variables was generalizable across growing seasons. We show that these analyses can improve variety recommendations in four aspects: reduction of climate bias, incorporation of seasonal climate forecasts, risk analysis, and geographic extrapolation. Variety recommendations derived from the citizen science trials led to important differences with previous recommendations

Agrobiodiversity data for supporting restoration of degraded ecosystem services

Peer Revie

Replication data for: "Crop variety management for climate adaptation supported by citizen science"

Farmers were invited to collaborate as citizen science volunteers in the crowdsourcing approach "tricot" (triadic comparison of technologies). We organized tricot trials, testing 10 common bean varieties (Phaseolus vulgaris) in Nicaragua during five growing seasons, 62 durum wheat (Triticum durum) modern and farmer varieties in Ethiopia during three seasons and 21 bread wheat (Triticum aestivum) varieties in India during four seasons. Sets of three varieties (four in the case of Ethiopia) were allocated randomly to blocks, corresponding to one block. Farmers observed and reported the performance of the assigned varieties evaluating which one presented the best and worst performance. This dataset contain the trial data related to yield (Nicaragua and India), overall performance and overall performance of tested varieties against the local variety used by farmers (Nicaragua). We linked farmers' observations via their geographic coordinates and planting dates to obtain environmental variables derived from public databases with global coverage. The lists of the bean, durum and bread wheat varieties tested are also provided

Agroecological transformation for sustainable food systems : Insight on France-CGIAR research

This 26th dossier d’Agropolis is devoted to research and partnerships in agroecology. The French Commission for International Agricultural Research (CRAI) and Agropolis International, on behalf of CIRAD, INRAE and IRD and in partnership with CGIAR, has produced this new issue in the ‘Les dossiers d’Agropolis international’ series devoted to agroecology. This publication has been produced within the framework of the Action Plan signed by CGIAR and the French government on February 4th 2021 to strengthen French collaboration with CGIAR, where agroecology is highlighted as one of the three key priorities (alongside climate change, nutrition and food systems)