The purpose of this section is to let readers judge my knowledge of participatory plant breeding and varietal selection.

My interest in breeding plants for their pest and disease resistance began around 1970 during my PhD studies when I discovered that certain wild species of potato possessed sticky hairs on their foliage which trapped their insect pests.

Employed at Rothamsted Experimental Station, I showed that this trait could be crossed into the cultivated potato. And, based on this, I had a ‘sabbatical’ at the newly-created International Potato Center (CIP) in Peru during the mid-’70s.

I also went to Cornell University (USA) which was then contracted by CIP to discover pest-resistant potatoes to tell them about my work. North American readers can grow two insect-resistant, sticky-haired potato varieties targeting organic growers and gardeners and called Prince Hairy and King Harry derived from this work.

My main project at Rothamsted was studying Ryegrass mosaic virus, a major disease of pastures transmitted by a minute eriophyid mite. Dr Jack Heard (Grassland Research Institute) and I discovered resistant plants in very old pastures in the UK and passed them to the Welsh Plant Breeding Institute which later released resistant varieties.

I joined the Natural Resources Institute as its main crop virologist in 1990. NRI is the result of the amalgamation of various natural science-based research institutes important to our previous empire and now is the UK centre for research on livelihoods of smallholders and pastoralists in Africa.

My main target was viruses of the root crops sweet potato and cassava. Resistance was the most practical control measure.

One of the most advanced sweet potato breeding projects is at the Namulonge Research Institute, near Kampala, Uganda. It targeted Eastern Uganda where the bulk of the crop was grown – they had recently released five varieties resistant to sweet potato virus disease (SPVD) – see PVS in developing countries.

I was based there 1994-97 and we tested these varieties locally, using smallholders to grow them on their holdings as they would their own crop. In this way, I discovered how productive participatory varietal selection is!

I’d used PVS by ‘instinct’; on my return to the UK, I discovered a wealth of information already known about it and I became sold on the idea.

Unlike St Paul on the road to Damascus, my conversion was slow, derived from growing up in a rural economy, discovering resistance in wild species and then in ancient pastures, and realising that the best answer for virus diseases in smallholdings was resistance.

And this led to me participatory plant breeding!

Guided by the results of others, projects in Ghana and Uganda succeeded in creating four cassava varieties and one sweet potato variety respectively.

I retired in 2017, started gardening at home and at a newly-acquired allotment – and I could think about gardeners’ needs. I started with trying to improve an ancient bean variety, the UK Pea Bean.

At the same time, I wrote a book on my career (My life with Plants). The analysis and research led me inexorably to realise how much UK gardeners need participatory varietal selection and plant breeding – and to this website!

If you google ‘RW Gibson’ and either ‘sweet potato’ or ‘cassava’, you’ll find plenty of my published work. But here are my main ones on PPB:

Manu-Aduening, J.A., Lamboll, R.I., Ampong Mensah, G., Lamptey, J.N., Moses, E., Dankyi A.A., Gibson, R.W. 2006. Development of superior cassava cultivars in Ghana by farmers and scientists: the process adopted, outcomes and contributions and changed roles of different stakeholders. Euphytica, 144, 331-340

Gibson R W, Byamukama E, Mpembe I, Kayongo J, Mwanga, R. O. M. 2008. Working with farmer groups in Uganda to develop new sweet potato cultivars: decentralisation and building on traditional approaches. Euphytica 159:217–228.

Gibson, R. W. 2009. A review of perceptual distinctiveness in landraces including an analysis of how its roles have been overlooked in plant breeding for low-input farming systems. Economic Botany 63:242–255.

Gibson, R.W., Mpembe, I. & Mwanga, R. O. M. 2011. Benefits of participatory plant breeding (PPB) as exemplified by the first-ever officially released PPB-bred sweet potato cultivar. Journal of Agricultural Science 149: 625–632.

Gibson, R.W., Mpembe, I. & Mwanga, R. O. M. 2011. The role of participatory plant breeding as exemplified by the release of the sweetpotato variety NASPOT 11 in Uganda in 2010. Aspects of Applied Biology 107: 71-76.