Wed, September 6, 2017 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM H. R. MACMILLAN BUILDING. Free. You are invited to the UBC Future of Food Dialogue Series: a campus-wide initiative bringing together food security and sustainability experts from across UBC and North America to engage audiences with the Global Food System.
Location: MacMillan Building, Room 258
Bio: Since 2000, she has been a senior research fellow in the Centre for Chinese Agricultural Policy (CCAP), Chinese Academy of Science. She is also a lecture professor of the College of Humanity and Development of China Agricultural University and also hold the same position in Jilin Agricultural University. She has been appointed as a visiting senior research fellow in the China Centre for Intellectual Property in Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science. Her research focuses on sustainable agricultural and rural development policies in China covering a range of several related areas like agricultural research and extension, biodiversity and related IPR and ABS issues, rural community based development and farmer organization, and gender and related social issues, etc. Her main research methodology is participatory action research and she is leading a participatory action research program under the CCAP. For details please visit www.parinchina.org.
This paper presents the author and her team’s 15 year Participatory Plant Breeding （PPB）program in SW China, which has linked poor ethnic mountain farmers with crop scientists at national and provincial level. Through community based PPB, working with farmers, maize and rice varieties have been conserved, improved and developed with both higher yields and improved resilience to drought and pests, resulting in greatly improved variety adoption rates, and many resilient local landraces have been improved and conserved. PPB has also enhanced awareness of the value of traditional knowledge and local landraces amongst farmers and agricultural scientists.