Participatory Research Trial Research Articles

Drivers of growth and establishment of the invasive plant Rumex acetosella within Andean fallow systems

Intensification of crop rotations and associated agricultural practices are reducing the capacity of traditional fallows to restore soil fertility and provide forage in Andean cropping systems. While the implementation of improved fallows offers great promise to enhance forage provision and maintain soil productivity, effects of these practices on the establishment of problematic weeds, including non-native plant species, remain poorly understood. To address this knowledge gap, we studied: i) how biotic and abiotic environmental factors influence the establishment and productivity of weeds in traditional fallows; and ii) to what extent improved fallows can help control weedy vegetation in smallholder rotations of the high Andes. Specifically, in this research, we focused on the invasive plant species Rumex acetosella L., which is a common concern of farmers throughout the central Peruvian Andes. We leveraged a multi-site, participatory research trial established in 2017 across eight communities in the region to understand the main drivers of R. acetosella presence and productivity. We used a total of 82 sites, each with paired treatments of traditional fallow (control with natural revegetation) and improved fallow (seeded with Vicia sativa L. and Avena sativa L.). Prior to treatment establishment we measured soil texture, pH, soil organic matter content as well as exchangeable macro-nutrients. Vegetation data was recorded in each treatment and divided into four categories: 1) A. sativa, 2) V. sativa, 3) R. acetosella, and 4) other weeds, and weighed to determine the relative biomass contribution of each. From these data, we calculated an index for R. acetosella pressure, weed pressure, and forage productivity. Our findings indicate that improved fallows greatly suppress weedy vegetation relative to unmanaged controls, including the invasive R. acetosella. Multivariate analyses suggested that R. acetosella abundance was associated with the presence of other non-planted weeds and predictors of soil fertility. The mean R. acetosella index in improved fallows was significantly lower compared to traditional fallows. We found R. acetosella biomass to be greater at lower productivity sites, i.e., those at higher elevations with cooler climates and sites with less fertile soils. Our findings indicate that if the fallow portion of a rotation is kept productive via adequate soil fertility inputs, the biomass of weeds, including the alien R. acetosella, is dramatically reduced.

Recruitment and Retention in Diverse Cohorts: Lessons From Community-Engaged Efforts

Effective behavioral interventions and associated trials reflect the complexity and context of the communities with which they are tailored and the behaviors they seek to address. Community-engaged methodology can serve to capture these complexities, particularly when focusing on health inequities. Significant health and healthcare disparities persist among racial/ethnic minorities and representation of racial/ethnic minorities is lacking within trials that reflects the diversity of the U.S. population. Novel approaches are needed to increase the diversity of participants within behavioral intervention research. This symposium covers the unique barriers and facilitators related to recruitment and retention across a range of populations, including African American and Hispanic/LatinX older adults with hearing loss to diverse dementia family caregivers and community-dwelling Korean American older adults. Beyond the challenges and opportunities, the symposium will focus on effective recruitment strategies. The discussion will include 1) findings from 10 years of recruiting older Korean Americans into community-based trials, 2) lessons in tailoring recruitment efforts to dementia family caregivers, 3) the integration of human-centered design into a community-engaged hearing care intervention targeting low-income and African American older adults, 4) successful recruitment and retention efforts in a community-based participatory research trial in a borderlands community, and 5) the deployment of strategies to recruit Latino, Asian, and African American older adults with depression and anxiety in the setting of the COVID-19 pandemic. This symposium seeks to build the evidence related to recruitment of older racial/ethnic minorities in diverse settings, which is fundamental to addressing health inequities through behavioral intervention research.

Evaluation of a school-based participatory intervention to improve school environments using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research

BackgroundParticipatory research offers a promising approach to addressing health inequities and improving the social determinants of health for diverse populations of adolescents. However, little research has systematically explored factors influencing the implementation of participatory health interventions targeting health disparities.ObjectiveThis study examined the utility of the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) in identifying and comparing barriers and facilitators influencing implementation of participatory research trials by employing an adaptation of the CFIR to assess the implementation of a multi-component, urban public school-based participatory health intervention.MethodsWe collected qualitative data over a one-year period through weekly team meeting observational field notes and regular semi-structured interviews with five community-based participatory researchers, one school-based partner, and four school principals involved in implementing a participatory intervention in five schools. Adapted CFIR constructs guided our largely deductive approach to thematic data analysis. We ranked each of the three intervention components as high or low implementation to create an overall implementation effectiveness score for all five schools. Cross-case comparison of constructs across high and low implementation schools identified constructs that most strongly influenced implementation.ResultsTen of 30 assessed constructs consistently distinguished between high and low implementation schools in this participatory intervention, with five strongly distinguishing. Three additional constructs played influential, though non-distinguishing, roles within this participatory intervention implementation. Influential constructs spanned all five domains and fit within three broad themes: 1) leadership engagement, 2) alignment between the intervention and institutional goals, priorities, demographics, and existing systems, and 3) tensions between adaptability and complexity within participatory interventions. However, the dynamic and collaborative nature of participatory intervention implementation underscores the artificial distinction between inner and outer settings in participatory research and the individual behavior change focus does not consider how relationships between stakeholders at multiple levels of participatory interventions shape the implementation process.ConclusionsThe CFIR is a useful framework for the assessment of participatory research trial implementation. Our findings underscore how the framework can be readily adapted to further strengthen its fit as a tool to examine project implementation in this context.

Portfolios of Climate Smart Agriculture Practices in Smallholder Rice-Wheat System of Eastern Indo-Gangetic Plains—Crop Productivity, Resource Use Efficiency and Environmental Foot Prints

The conventional tillage based rice-wheat system (RWS) in Indo-genetic plains (IGP) of South Asia is facing diverse challenges like increase in production cost and erratic climatic events. This results in stagnated crop productivity and declined farm profitability with increased emission of greenhouse gases. Therefore, 3-year multi-location farmer’s participatory research trial was conducted to assess the impact of crop establishment and residue management techniques on crop productivity, economic profitability and environmental footprints in RWS. The aim of this study was to analyze the effect of combinations of improved agronomic technologies compared to farmer’s practices (FP) on crop productivity, profitability, resource use efficiency and environmental footprints. The experiment had six scenarios that is, S1-Farmer’s practice; Conventional tillage (CT) without residue; S2-CT with residue, S3- Reduced tillage (RT) with residue + Recommended dose of fertilizer (RDF); S4-RT/zero tillage (ZT) with residue + RDF, S5-ZT with residue + RDF + green seeker + tensiometer + information & communication technology + crop insurance and S6- S5 + site specific nutrient management. Climate smart agriculture practices (CSAPs; mean of S4, S5 and S6) increase system productivity and farm profitability by 10.5% and 29.4% (on 3 yrs’ mean basis), whereas, improved farmers practices (mean of S2 and S3) resulted in only 3.2% and 5.3% increments compared to farmer’s practice (S1), respectively. On an average, CSAPs saved 39.3% of irrigation water and enhanced the irrigation and total water productivity by 53.9% and 18.4% than FP, respectively. In all the 3-years, CSAPs with high adaptive measures enhanced the energy-use-efficiency (EUE) and energy productivity (EP) by 43%–54% and 44%–61%, respectively than FP. In our study, global warming potential (GWP), GHG emission due to consumption energy and greenhouse gas intensity were recorded lower by 43%, 56% and 59% in Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) with high adaptive measures than farmers practices (3652.7 kg CO2 eq. ha−1 yr−1, 722.2 kg CO2 eq. ha−1 yr−1 and 718.7 Mg kg−1 CO2 eq. ha−1 yr−1). The findings of the present study revealed that CSA with adaption of innovative measures (S6) improved 3-year mean system productivity by 10.5%, profitability by 29.4%, water productivity and energy productivity by 18.3% and 48.9%, respectively than FP. Thus, the results of our 3-year farmer’s participatory study suggest that in a RW system, climate smart agriculture practices have better adaptive capacity and could be a feasible option for attaining higher yields, farm profitability, energy-use efficiency and water productivity with sustained/improved environmental quality in smallholder production systems of Eastern IGP of India and other similar agro-ecologies of South Asia. Finally, the adoption of these CSAPs should be promoted in the RW rotation of IGP to ensure food security, restoration of soil health and to mitigate climate change, the key sustainable development goals (SDGs).

Changes in soil biology under conservation agriculture based sustainable intensification of cereal systems in Indo-Gangetic Plains

Continuous rice-wheat (RW) rotation with conventional agronomic practices has resulted in declining factor productivity and degrading soil resources. A farmer's participatory research trial was conducted in Karnal, India to evaluate 8 combinations of cropping systems, tillage, crop establishment method and residue management effects on key soil physico-chemical and biological properties. Treatments (T) 1–4 involved RW and 5–8 maize-wheat (MW) with conventional tillage (CT) and zero tillage (ZT) with (+R) and without (−R) residue recycling. Residue was either incorporated (Ri) or mulched (Rm). Treatment 1 (RW/CT−R) had the highest bulk density (BD) (1.47Mgm−3) and T8 (MW/ZT+Rm), the lowest (1.34Mgm−3). After 3years of cropping, soil accumulated more organic C in (a) MW (9.33Mgha−1) than RW (8.5Mgha−1), (b) ZT (9.25Mgha−1) than CT (8.58Mgha−1), and (c)+R (10.18Mgha−1) than –R (7.65Mgha−1). MW system with ZT and residue (T8: MW/ZT+Rm) registered 208, 263, 210 and 48% improvement in soil microbial biomass C (MBC) and N, dehydrogenase activity (DHA) and alkaline phosphatase activity (APA), whereas RW system in T4 (RW/ZT+Rm) registered 83, 81, 44 and 13%, respectively as compared with T1 (RW/CT−R), the business as usual scenario. Treatment 8 (MW/ZT+Rm) recorded the highest microbial population viz. bacteria, fungi and actinomycetes. The most abundant micro-arthropods present in the soil of experimental plot were Collembola, Acari and Protura which varied with treatments. Soil MBC, APA, BD and micro-arthropod population were identified as the key indicators and contributed significantly towards soil quality index (SQI). MW system with ZT and Rm (T8) recorded the highest SQI (1.45) followed by T6 (1.34) and the lowest score (0.29) being in T1 (RW/CT−R). The SQI was higher by 90% in MW compared to RW, 22% in ZT compared to CT, and 100% in residue recycling compared with residue removal. System yield was strongly related to key soil quality indicators and also positively correlated with SQI. Longer-term studies are essential to realize maximal effects of improvements in soil health on crop yields.

Man's artificial glacier—a way forward toward water harvesting for pre and post sowing irrigation to facilitate early sowing of wheat in cold arid Himalayan deserts of Ladakh

AbstractUnavailability of irrigation water for early sowing has remained a constant problem in cold arid deserts of Ladakh. In order to get a solution to this problem, a 2-yr farmers’ participatory research trial with best bet agronomic management on artificial glacier water harvesting technology was conducted. The technology involves collecting water from natural glaciers that melt during late December. The water is diverted toward a shed constructed with stone embankments set up at regular intervals. The area is chosen where there is minimum interference of solar radiation, generally between two mountain slopes or ridge that is on the leeward side. The melted water is that melts from the natural glacier impeded by the embankments and get frozen here. This frozen water starts melting in late March and is used for both pre sowing and initial crop water requirement. It also ensures early sowing of wheat by creating additional 45-day window which leads to introduction of long- and medium-duration wheat varieties to replace decades old locally grown short-duration varieties. The work was initiated with a benchmark survey of 100 farmers to get an understanding of present irrigation scenario, crop management practices and date of sowing. Data from 99 farmer participating trial of wheat conducted after or from bench mark survey clearly indicated that the effect of water shortage can be seen on yield and yield attributing characters due to unavailability of pre sowing irrigation and water requirement at imperative growth stages and may also lead to terminal heat stress in wheat crop. Out of total number of irrigations applied, initial two irrigations can be compensated by artificial glacier water harvesting technique, leading to a revolution in the agriculture scenario of the tribal population by introduction of long- and medium-duration wheat varieties in cold arid desert of Ladakh for the very first time. It was observed that wheat seeding done in first fortnight of April gave better yields in comparison to late seeded wheat. Moreover, the long-duration varieties (LDVs) or medium-duration varieties (MDVs) sown under late condition gave better yield in comparison to locally grown short-duration varieties sown at same time. Yield potential of LDVs and MDVs of wheat under late sowing was found quite low in comparison to early-sown wheat, still when compared with the performance of locally grown wheat the yields were more even if the local varieties were sown early. The outcome of this study will help the farmers of tribal, cold arid community in harvesting better wheat yields by timely sowing of the wheat crop accompanied with better bet agronomic management practices. Government initiative is further required to ensure better outreach of complete crop management strategies to the tribal farming community of the region in order to ensure food security and improve their socioeconomic status.

Sustaining Soil Quality, Resilience and Critical Carbon Level under Different Cropping Systems in Semi-Arid Tropical Alfisol Soils

Subsistence agriculture practice and a combination of harsh climate and fragile soils along with increasing demographic pressure are matters of great concern from the viewpoint of resource management and longterm sustainability in the semi-arid tropical Alfisol soils of India. In this study, soil quality index (SQI) has been computed on 190 sites of farmers' fields in southern India to evaluate the possible effect of land management practices on soil degradation and determine the critical levels of soil organic C stock to maintain a desirable SQI and also suggest appropriate management practices. In all, 26 predominant physical, chemical and biological properties of soils were studied and based on principal component analysis, moisture retention at field capacity, available soil N, available P, DTPA-extractable Zn, exchangeable sodium percentage, C-mineralization and bulk density were identified as the key indicators of the study region. SQI was also computed using four soil functions, viz. nutrient cycling, availability of water, resistance of soil to degradation, and salinity and sodicity. Soil resilience index was computed using data on substrateinduced respiration after exposing the soil to heat stress. SQI was highest under paddy followed by permanent fallow, maize, cotton, intercropping, redgram, and was lowest under castor system. Based on the results, it was observed that the soils which had higher SQI were also productive and they exhibited higher resilience capacity. An amount of 8.6 Mg ha -1 soil organic C stock per 15 cm depth was found essential to maintain soil quality and 2.2 Mg ha -1 of organic matter was needed every year to maintain this stock. On-farm participatory research trial was conducted using SQI as a tool for sustainable land-management practices.

Role of Farmers Participatory Vegetable Breeding in Kashmir

Vegetable crops are conducting under Farmers Participatory Research Trial in Temperate regions of Kashmir Valley. The trials are designed and managed by farmers, the researchers have only advice for selection of the resource conservation technology (treatments). Farmers have full control over the selection of treatments to be used on his/her field. The main objectives of this type of research is to be established and demonstrate the benefits of resource conservation technologies like raised bed, furrow irrigated planting system, zero tillage etc. over the conventional practices. In these type of trial farmers are briefed about new practices. The participating farmers are encouraged to experiment their own and are given the full control over the selection of subset of resource conservation technologies to be tested on their fields with a view to assess farmer innovation and acceptability.

Farmers’ views on the future prospects of aerobic rice culture in Pakistan

In parts of Pakistan, the sustainability of conventional flooded rice systems is threatened by diminishing resources, particularly – land, water, and labour. The adoption of aerobic rice system (ARS), an alternative to the conventional systems, could considerably increase resource-use efficiencies. Information on farmer perceptions is vital to identify socio-technological factors of adoption. Our aim was to understand and analyse farmer perceptions about ARS in regards to future adoption. We conducted our study in the Pakistani Punjab with three groups of farmers: (I) informant farmers in rice–wheat system who trialled ARS in a participatory research trial (n=70), (II) rice farmers in rice–wheat, mixed-cropping and cotton–wheat system with no experience of ARS (n=97), and (III) non-rice farmers in mixed-cropping and cotton–wheat system (n=48). Data were collected using a pretested semi-structured questionnaire and analysed by using descriptive statistics and chi-square tests. More than half of respondents in groups II and III had never heard of ARS, though, 76% were open to experimenting. Across three groups, farmers perceived ARS as a means of increasing resource-use efficiency particularly for labour, net profitability, and an option for crop diversification in the mixed-cropping system. Perceived threats were weeds, diseases, poor germination, spikelet sterility, low yields, and frequent irrigation requirement. Deciding factors for repeat ARS plantings by group I were: ease of operation due to direct seeding, good income, and low input requirement. Deciding factors against repeat plantings were: unavailability of suitable fine grain basmati varieties, falling water table, weed problem, and unsuitable soil type. The results suggest that aerobic rice is an interesting alternative to traditional rice production as evident from the willingness to plant again by 73% group I demonstration households but the unavailability of well-adapted basmati varieties hampers its expansion. Farmers’ appreciation of risks and benefits can pave the way for large-scale adoption. Associated risks can be reduced by filling the identified knowledge or technological gaps through additional research and farmer awareness programmes.

H.U.B city steps: methods and early findings from a community-based participatory research trial to reduce blood pressure among African Americans.

BackgroundCommunity-based participatory research (CBPR) has been recognized as an important approach to develop and execute health interventions among marginalized populations, and a key strategy to translate research into practice to help reduce health disparities. Despite growing interest in the CBPR approach, CBPR initiatives rarely use experimental or other rigorous research designs to evaluate health outcomes. This behavioral study describes the conceptual frameworks, methods, and early findings related to the reach, adoption, implementation, and effectiveness on primary blood pressure outcomes.MethodsThe CBPR, social support, and motivational interviewing frameworks are applied to test treatment effects of a two-phased CBPR walking intervention, including a 6-month active intervention quasi experimental phase and 12-month maintenance randomized controlled trial phase to test dose effects of motivational interviewing. A community advisory board helped develop and execute the culturally-appropriate intervention components which included social support walking groups led by peer coaches, pedometer diary self-monitoring, monthly diet and physical activity education sessions, and individualized motivational interviewing sessions. Although the study is on-going, three month data is available and reported. Analyses include descriptive statistics and paired t tests.ResultsOf 269 enrolled participants, most were African American (94%) females (85%) with a mean age of 43.8 (SD = 12.1) years. Across the 3 months, 90% of all possible pedometer diaries were submitted. Attendance at the monthly education sessions was approximately 33%. At the 3-month follow-up 227 (84%) participants were retained. From baseline to 3-months, systolic BP [126.0 (SD = 19.1) to 120.3 (SD = 17.9) mmHg; p < 0.001] and diastolic BP [83. 2 (SD = 12.3) to 80.2 (SD = 11.6) mmHg; p < 0.001] were significantly reduced.ConclusionsThis CBPR study highlights implementation factors and signifies the community's active participation in the development and execution of this study. Reach and representativeness of enrolled participants are discussed. Adherence to pedometer diary self-monitoring was better than education session participation. Significant decreases in the primary blood pressure outcomes demonstrate early effectiveness. Importantly, future analyses will evaluate long-term effectiveness of this CBPR behavioral intervention on health outcomes, and help inform the translational capabilities of CBPR efforts.