Jethobudho rice variety in Nepal

Farmers have their own individual preferences and needs and this is reflected in the diversity of crops and varieties that they grow. Farmers’ preferences depend upon the specific characteristics of their agro-ecosystem, as well as on socio-cultural, religious or nutritional use values. Traditional local varieties, which have developed over a long process of domestication, selection and interaction with the environment, often show variation for adaptive or qualitative traits. That is why small-scale farmers in many production systems still continue to cultivate traditional varieties and why the introduction of improved varieties did not result in the complete disappearance of locally adapted, traditional crop species and varieties. Participatory crop improvement (PCI) aims to further support the use of those local varieties within their production systems (Jarvis et al., 2011). In the current chapter we share our experience of the participatory genetic enhancement (PGE) of a local rice variety in Nepal. Our PGE work contributes to the conservation and utilization of a famous traditional rice population known as Jethobudho, in Pokhara Valley, Nepal. Our experiences are based on an eight-year process that formed part of an agrobiodiversity project described in more detail by Subedi in Chapter 1.2. The objective of our project, implemented by Local Initiatives for Biodiversity, Research and Development (LI-BIRD) together with the Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC) and Bioversity International, was to strengthen the scientific basis for in situ and on-farm conservation of agricultural biodiversity. We identified PGE as one of the strategies for contributing to on-farm management of agrobiodiversity.