Sourcing and deploying new crop varieties in mountain production systems

Many farmers continue to grow traditional crop varieties, along with varieties released decades ago that have become creolized to local conditions. Absence of modern varieties in these farmers’ fields is due either to the failure of conventional plant breeding to meet their production or cultural needs, weak extension services that are not being able to provide adequate access to new varieties, or reduced safety net to test out new varieties in their fields. We reviewed literature to compare and contrast various conventional and participatory methods for sourcing new varieties for farmers in the fragile mountain environment of Nepal. We test the potential of an heuristic framework as a decision making tool i) to provide diversity rich solutions to farmers for managing environmental variability and biotic and abiotic production constraints, and ii) to broaden the genetic base of traditional crop diversity for enhancing system resilience. Pros and cons of a diverse set of methods, as well as production constraints and institutional capacity, are considered as decision tools for selecting the appropriate method. Participatory variety selection (PVS), informal research and development (IRD) kits, and diversity kits, are shown to be simple methods for sourcing new crop diversity which can reach a greater number of farmers in risk prone mountain environments.