Genetic Improvement Methods with an Agroecological Approach for Plant Breeding

Conventional genetic improvement programs play a fundamental role in Brazilian agriculture, transforming this activity into an important contributor to the national economy. However, most of the time it does not serve family farmers, as this cultivation system has different characteristics from conventional agriculture, where it is often composed of agroecological and diversified crops, in a smaller territorial extension, without conditions for carrying out controls using technologies and inputs acquired externally. Thus, participatory breeding aims to align the improvement of cultivar productivity with the provision of biodiversity for family farming. This technique consists of the farmer's ability to select the cultivars best adapted to their environment based on the selection of their seeds, adopting agroecological principles and agrobiodiversity management.