The paper provides an overview of institutions, scientists, and practitioners involved over the years in the various ways in which participatory plant breeding (PPB) is implemented, with indication of the crops involved and the countries in which it took place, or is still taking place. This might help creating a better awareness of the scope (both geographical and crop wise) of the different methodologies as well as of their advantages, disadvantages, applicability, and limitations. Through a literature survey, we found 254 publications showing that over a period of 36 years participatory approaches in plant breeding have been used in 69 countries (10 developed and 59 developing) with 47 crops including self-pollinated, cross-pollinated, and vegetatively propagated crops, by several Institutions including CGIAR centers, universities, and NGOs. We argue that there are no obvious scientific or technical reasons limiting the use of PPB, and we interpret the limited institutionalization as a difficulty to accept the paradigm shift that participation implies.

Successful organic farming requires crop varieties that are resilient to environmental variability. Assessing variety performance across the range of conditions represented on working farms is vital to developing such varieties; however, data collected from on-farm, participatory trials can be difficult to both collect and interpret. To assess the utility of data arising from participatory trialing efforts, we examined the performance of butternut squash (Cucurbita moschata L.), broccoli (Brassica oleracea L.) and carrot (Daucus carota L.) varieties grown in diverse organic production environments in participatory trials in Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin and New York using adaptability analysis (regression of variety means on environmental index). Patterns of adaptation varied across varieties, with some demonstrating broad adaptation and others showing specific adaptation to low- or high-yielding environments. Selection of varieties with broad vs specific adaptation should be guided by farmers’ risk tolerance and on-farm environmental variation. Adaptability analysis was appropriate for continuous variables (e.g., yield traits), but less so for ordinal variables and quality traits such as flavor and appearance, which can be vitally important in organic vegetable crop variety selection. The relative advantages of adaptability analysis and additive main effects and multiplicative interactions are also discussed in relation to on-farm trial networks. This work demonstrated the unique challenges presented by extensive participatory vegetable trialing efforts, which, as compared to grain crops, require novel approaches to facilitating farmer participation as well as data collection and analysis. Efficient, precise and reliable methods for evaluating quality related traits in these crops would allow researchers to assess stability and adaptation across a wider range of traits, providing advantages for effective plant breeding and trialing activities within the organic sector.