Farmers' preference and informal seed dissemination of first Ug99 tolerant wheat variety in Bangladesh

Abstract

Farmers' preference study and informal seed dissemination was carried out through farmer participatory variety selection (PVS) during 2006-2007 to 2008-2009 by the Wheat Research Centre (WRC), Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), Dinajpur, Bangladesh, in collaboration with CIMMYT. Four varieties including widely grown Shatabdi and four advance lines including Ug99 tolerant BAW 1064 were tested in mother-baby trial approach in 8 villages in each year. Mother trials were researcher designed but farmer managed. However, baby trials were designed and managed by farmers themselves. Preference scores of 30 farmers for varieties were recorded two times viz., pre and post-harvest stages. Farmers' preferred BAW 1064 owing to its 10% yield superiority over the widely grown Shatabdi variety, bolder white grains, larger grains/spike, non-lodging behaviour, earliness and resistance to diseases. This variety was found moderately resistant to Ug99 in Kenya. BAW 1064 was released as BARI Gom 26 in March 2010. After three years of PVS work, 19.4 t seeds reached informally to 969 farmers of 24 PVS villages from only 252 kg source seeds supplied for trials. In 2009-2010, seed production of this variety was done in 44 ha; 33.8 ha in 111 farmers' fields and 10.2 ha in research stations. Around 150 t seeds were produced that are being used for further testing and multiplication in 2010-2011. Seed dissemination through PVS was much faster than official approach of Bangladesh Agriculture Development Corporation (BADC). Hence, for selection and dissemination of CIMMYT developed Ug99 tolerant lines, farmer-participatory approach is being deployed.