Tricot (triadic comparisons of technologies) is a citizen science approach for testing technology options in their use environments, which is being applied to on-farm testing of crop varieties. Over the last years, important progress has been made on the tricot methodology of which an overview is given. Trial dimensions depend on several factors but tricot implies that plot size is as small as possible to include farmers with small plots (yet avoiding excessive interplot competition) while many locations are included to ensure representativeness of trials. Gender and socio-economic work is focused on better household characterization and recruitment strategies that move beyond sex-aggregation to address aspects of intersectionality. Ethics, privacy and traditional knowledge aspects will be addressed through expanding digital support in this direction. Genetic gain estimates need to be addressed by yield measurements, which can be generated by farmers themselves. There is conceptual clarity about the needs for documentation of trials and publishing data but this aspect requires further digital development. Much progress has been made on the ClimMob digital platform already, which is user friendly and supports trials in the main steps and includes open-source data analytics packages. Further improvements need to be made to ensure better integration with other tools. A next step will be the development of scaling strategies that involve business development. An important input into these strategies are economic studies, which are ongoing.

https://dx.doi.org/10.4160/23096586rtbwp20212

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Jacob van Ettenhttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-7554-2558

Erna Abidinhttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-8236-1437

Edward Careyhttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-1007-2529

Marie-Angélique Laportehttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-8461-9745

Isabel Lopez Noriegahttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-8272-8462

Berta Ortiz-Crespohttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-6664-0815

Béla Teekenhttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-3150-1532

JACOB ULZENhttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-7378-1002

https://dx.doi.org/10.4160/23096586rtbwp20212

Social Science and Agribusiness

Agribusiness; Agronomy; Cassava; Plant Production; Smallholder Farmers; Socioeconomy; Value Chains

Sciences; Foods; Agriculture; Farms; Crops

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