Description
After a long career in agricultural research in the UK and then in Africa, Richard Gibson ‘retired’ and got an allotment. In his work, he had found that African smallholders often rejected varieties bred for them on research stations – and that participatory plant breeding (PPB) was the solution. He was somewhat surprised to find that modern varieties of vegetables also had, on the whole, not been bred to be ‘fit for gardeners’ purposes’, instead commercial interests dominating. Once again, PPB seems appropriate but it takes some very recent and exciting developments to enable this to work for UK gardeners.
About the Author:
Richard Gibson (BSc; PhD) has researched UK agricultural crops at Rothamsted Experimental Station and more recently at the Natural Resources Institute has led overseas agricultural aid projects, mainly in Uganda and Tanzania. He has worked extensively on crop resistance and participatory plant breeding. He has published over a 100 academic papers and in this book he turns this knowledge to address UK gardening problems.
