Farming is a multi-faceted activity that involves economic, biological, social, and land-management decision-making. Farmers play an essential role in shaping the diversity of their crops through this process of decision-making. Their values and needs are reflected in the selection and maintenance of crops with specific and useful agromorphological traits and adaptive characteristics. Because farmers are the repository of all the information and experience which inform their individual patterns of crop-management, the study of crop diversity must involve research on farmer knowledge. Participatory research involves working directly with farmers to elicit their knowledge in order to understand the social variables which shape on-farm crop diversity. This type of research should not be an extractive exercise, but a cooperative, reciprocal, and beneficial process for both researchers and participants.
Participatory methodologies incorporate the perspectives of multiple actors whose ideas, interests and identities shape the practice of farming in a given agroecosystem. In addition to the need to understand the basis for farmer decision-making and management of diversity, additional reasons for the use of participatory methodologies in research on genetic diversity are to:

· improve the functional efficiency, efficacy, and appropriateness of formal research;
· empower marginalized people and groups so that their own decision-making, research capacity, and ability to make effective demands on research and extension is strengthened;

· gain a better understanding of methods to ensure that different stakeholders' interests are heard and considered equally;

· create guidelines for varied circumstances, such as differences in cultural or regional contexts or in the nature of the research problem; and

· reach an understanding of how addressing the needs of particular groups may have impacts or benefits for wider groups.1

1 Adapted from Hilary Feldstein in (1996) CGIAR Gender Program, New Frontiers in Participatory Research and Gender Analysis, Systemwide Programme on Participatory Research and Gender Analysis for Technology and Institutional Innovation, P.76.
There are two important questions to be asked in the process of developing participatory methodologies:
· What type of participation is involved?
Answering this question requires a decision as to whether participation is on a nominal or consultative basis alone, or whether participants will also be involved in the design of the research, the research process, and the deployment of research results.
· How is the participatory process managed?
This involves determining what are the goals of the research, who is participating, in what context participation occurs, and what are the criteria for success.