Participatory rural appraisal and farmers’ perception about common bean varieties in temperate Kashmir

Present investigation was undertaken during 2012 to 2014 in which 54 genotypes, both pole and bush type of Common beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) were selected among a number of germplasm lines, land races and research material in order to generate information on the farmer’s’ perception about the Common bean varieties. Participatory rural appraisal was conducted in 32 villages of Kashmir through a broad questionnaires comprising of questions pertaining to the socio-economic conditions, farming systems, production constraints and varietal preferences of the common bean. The Participatory Rural Appraisal results revealed that common bean is generally grown as a rainfed crop (70 %) and is intercropped with maize/ potato/vegetable and merely as sole crop (20.66 %). Low yielding varieties and diseases (68.27 %) are considered as major challenges in the success of common bean crop, while as red colour with kidney shaped types (50 %) are highly being preferred as a pulse crop. The exercise of Participatory Rural Appraisal was carried out to generate basic information by assessing the need based constraints and devise the target breeding approach, by taking into consideration all constraints and also devise future breeding programme. A successful PRA provides the information needed to specify the characteristic in a new variety regarding its physical environment and the existing varietal diversity. For a breeding program, well applied Participatory Rural Appraisal techniques or customer profiling results in better client orientation and makes possible efficient goal setting or product design. Successful PRA provides everything that could be included in the full design specification of a new crop variety.