New goals, roles and rules around agrobiodiversity management

Enrichment of agrobiodiversity is essential for the sustainability of food systems. Embedding diversity in farming systems, however, appears as a complex process, which demands to address the issue from different perspectives and builds on the interaction among multiple actors, at different scales. This approach to the agrobiodiversity issue indeed mirrors the evolution of the ways to tackle it, through an increasing adoption of participatory methods and decentralised research and experimentation. This has led the approach to agrobiodiversity management to evolve, from a static conservation to a dynamic management, involving farmers actively and progressively entering a collective, social dimension. This last represents an important area of experimentation of innovative practices, from the selection of genetic material, to the establishment of new set of rules and social norms, to the creation of alternative systems for seed reproduction and circulation, to embeddedness of the agrobiodiversity management in the food chain. As such, it shows a significant innovation potential, being able to trigger meaningful changes in the approach to genetic improvement and seed management. This paper analyses these aspects, looking at the processes through which initiatives for the enrichment of agrobiodiversity are set up and run by multi-actor networks - where farmers play a key role - and prove to be able to trigger broader changes. The analysis of strengths and critical elements of these innovation experiences provides useful insights to improve the research and public support approach.