Recovery and participatory selection of rice cultivars of the Comarca Ngäbe-Buglé, Panamá

Abstract

The study was carried out with the aim of recovering, valuing and conserving rice cultivars
and promoting their incorporation into production systems to increase food availability. In a
five-year period (2010-2015) a collection of the rice cultivars used in the production systems
of family agriculture in the Comarca Ngäbe-Buglé (CNB) was carried out, for a later phenotypic
description, the separation of differentiated groups and the participatory selection of the
most promising from the perspective of producers. For the participatory selection of cultivars,
four criteria of evaluation (sanity, tillering, plant height and length of the spike) were defined in
agreement with the producers. Four cultivars were selected from a total of 52 evaluated, being
these Fortuna Negro, Arroz Blanco, Chato Blanco and Guanacaste. The selection made by the
producers allowed to differentiate the best cultivars consistently with the agronomic morphological
evaluations carried out by the technical team.