Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
11.4.4 STRUCTURE OF COLLABORATIVE BREAD-WHEAT
BREEDING PROJECT
The project Croisements du Roc has evolved into a collaborative plant
breeding project with shared responsibility among farmers, farmers' asso-
ciations and researchers in the context of a new European project that has
much more flexibility in terms of the structure of research projects. From
the preliminary year of on-farm trials, there appears to be much interest
on the part of farmers, but there are also many questions on methodol-
ogy, ranging from practical to theoretical and ethical. Discussions over
methods and strategies have led to a better understanding of the needs and
constraints of each partner, and the goal is for the project to remain flex-
ible, within the limits of some minimal standards that all participants agree
to implement, with participants able to choose their level of involvement
over time. In terms of methods of experimental design, there is always
a tension between researchers need for designs that give greater preci-
sion and allow for appropriate statistical analysis and farmers need for
simplicity in terms of management. This has led researchers to look into
alternatives to traditional experimental designs such as randomized com-
plete block designs which may be difficult for farmers without small scale
equipment to implement.
A broader refl ection on the methods of organization of the on-farm
trials to meet both researcher and farmer needs led to the new structure of
the trials. To provide greater fl exibility for the farmers and accommodate
researchers need for quantitative data to analyze population adaptation and
evolution, a regional platform satellite trial model was implemented in
2010-2011, based on methods developed by Snapp [38]. Figure 4 shows
the division of on-farm trials in the French network and Figure 5 is a sche-
matic of the overall organization of the collaborative wheat breeding pro-
gram.
One farm in each region, preferably with access to small plot equip-
ment, was designated to host the regional platform trial. This trial con-
sisted of about 30 different populations with two checks chosen by the
farmers and replicated twice each. Plant phenotypic data is taken to char-
acterize the populations, comparable to data collected in previous years
as described in the material and methods section, and agronomic traits
 
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