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Seeds of resilience: Participatory Plant Breeding and the use of Local Food Plants for improved nutrition through Farmer Field Schools (FFS)

Multi-country (Guatemala, Peru, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Nepal, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Uganda)

Year of publication 2025

Place of publication Rome, Italy ;

Pages 8 p.

Author FAO

Publisher FAO ;

Product type Brochure, flyer, fact-sheet

Synopsis (short abstract) The Sowing Diversity = Harvesting Security (SD=HS) programme is a multicountry initiative, led by Oxfam Novib and other partners, aimed at improving the food and nutrition security of smallholder farmers and indigenous peoples. Through the Farmer Field Schools approach, the programme empowers producers, particularly women and indigenous communities to access, develop, and use plant genetic resources by introducing two complementary curricula: Participatory Plant Breeding (PPB) and Local Food Plants (LFP) for nutrition, thereby strengthening their capacity to adapt to climate change. The PPB curriculum enables farmers to define breeding priorities, collaborate with National Research Systems (NARS), and develop locally adapted, climate-resilient varieties using methodologies like participatory variety selection (PVS) or enhancement (PVE), and participatory variety development (PVD). The LFP curriculum tackles undernutrition with the domestication and market of neglected and underutilized species (NUS) through a mix of traditional and scientific knowledge, cooking techniques, and community engagement.

Language English

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