Agronomic Evaluation of Bread Wheat Varieties from Participatory Breeding: A Combination of Performance and Robustness

This article reports on a Participatory plant breeding (PPB) program that started on bread wheat in France in 2006 and has achieved a range of outcomes, from the emergence of new organization among actors, to specific experimental designs and statistical methods developed, and to populations varieties developed and cultivated by farmers. It was found that several PPB varieties were of great agronomic interest, combining relatively good performance even under the most favorable conditions of organic agriculture and good robustness, i.e., the ability to maintain productivity under more constraining conditions. The PPB varieties also tended to show a good temporal dynamic stability and appeared promising for the farmers involved.