Authors: Dr. Bertille Auvrey Agnès, International Project Manager (ENoLL)
The transition toward sustainable agroecology is not simply a technical challenge, it is also a societal transformation. It requires moving innovation out of controlled environments like laboratories into real farming systems, where diversity, uncertainty and local knowledge play a central role. Within ROTATES, this conviction has shaped a clear question from the start: how do we get people to grow, test, and adopt Minor Root and Tuber crops (MRTs) in real farming contexts?
The answer lies in citizen science and in the Living Lab methodology as its backbone.
Farmers as Knowledge Producers
In ROTATES, farmers and agricultural stakeholders are not the end-users of research. They are active contributors to knowledge production. They observe, test, and evaluate crop varieties in their own fields, under their own conditions. This is the core promise of citizen science in agriculture: making the people closest to the land central actors in the scientific process, not just recipients of its outputs.
The Living Lab model provides the structure for this engagement. Living Labs are user-centred, open innovation ecosystems that integrate research and innovation processes into real-life communities. By adopting this approach, ROTATES creates spaces where co-creation is a working method with farmers, agronomists, community leaders, and researchers shaping the process together.
Citizen Science Across Diverse Contexts
ROTATES runs six pilot Living Labs across five countries, each addressing specific agroecological challenges tied to minor root and tuber crops: sweet potato, yam, cassava, and taro. Two examples of applied citizen science:
In French Guiana, the pilot Living Lab works closely with the Palikur indigenous community, whose detailed knowledge of local cassava varieties, growing conditions, and traditional uses is irreplaceable. The Amazon Basin is a primary centre of domestication for cassava and American yam, meaning local knowledge here is not supplementary to science, it is science.
In the Republic of the Congo, trials are carried out with smallholder farmers and villages where cassava is a vital staple crop, and production is primarily for local consumption. Engaging these communities means working within the rhythms of subsistence farming and building genuine trust over time.
These examples illustrate a broader truth: citizen science in agriculture cannot be standardised. It must be adapted to each local context while maintaining shared principles of openness, co-creation, and respect.
Building the Conditions for Participation
Meaningful citizen engagement does not happen spontaneously. ROTATES has invested in building capacity at three levels. The first focuses on supporting pilot Living Labs in developing their own governance structures and operational methodology. The second trains project partners in Living Lab facilitation so they can effectively engage communities on the ground. The third prepares Living Labs for concrete field activities, ensuring all participants have the right tools and understanding before the work begins.
This layered approach reflects one of the project’s core convictions: participation is strongest when it is embedded in long-term relationships, not one-off consultations.
Challenges remain real. Building trust while ensuring ethical consent, managing power imbalances, adapting methods across radically different local contexts, and using accessible language that avoids exclusion, these are ongoing responsibilities, not problems to be solved once and forgotten.
What Citizen Science Teaches Us
ROTATES is still an ongoing project, and its full impact is still unfolding. But several lessons are already emerging for the broader citizen science community. Communities are not only participants — they are co-creators of the research process itself. The Living Lab approach can operate across highly diverse contexts while maintaining shared principles. And the knowledge produced in fields, by farmers, is just as legitimate and valuable as that produced in laboratories.
