PARTICIPATORY PLANT BREEDING CHINA IN GUANGXI, SOUTH-WEST Participatory plant breeding efforts have been underway in Guangxi province in Southwest China since 2000. These efforts build on an impact study carried out from 1994 to 1998 | 11 Participatory Plant Breeding in Guangxi South-west China by Yiching Song1 Shihung Zhang2 Kaijian Hung and Lanqiu Qin3 Qunying Pan4 and Ronnie Vernooy5 1 Researcher and project coordinator from the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy CCAP Chinese Academy of Science Beijing China. 2 Leading breeder from the Institute of Crop Science Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science CAAS Beijing China. 3 Breeders from the Guangxi Maize Research Institute Guangxi China. 4 Extensionist from Dujie Township Lon An county Guangxi province China. 5 Program officer from the International Development Research Center IDRC Ottawa Canada. RVernooy@ Introduction Participatory plant breeding efforts have been underway in Guangxi province in Southwest China since 2000. These efforts build on an impact study carried out from 1994 to 1998 to assess the impact of CIMMYT s maize germplasm on poor farmers in Southwest China Song 1998 . This study critically analysed the processes of technology development and diffusion. One of the key findings of the impact study was the systematic separation between the formal and the farmers seeds systems. This separation resulted in inadequate variety development poor adoption of formally bred modern varieties an increasingly narrow genetic base for breeding and a decrease in genetic biodiversity in farmers fields Song 1998 . The PPB research project has its origin in the impact study referred to above which resulted in the PhD dissertation of the first author of this case study. The study of the maize breeding program and its varieties and the contacts with farmers in the South-west China gave rise to a mutually shared interest to experiment with possible improvements. The PPB project that grew out of this interest received financial and technical support from the International Development Research Centre IDRC and the Ford Foundation. It set out to identify technological and institutional options for developing more
