Résumé
A participatory plant breeding project has been initiated to understand the poor adoption of improved varieties of pearl millet in the soudano-Guinean zone of Mali. A prospection and a participatory diagnostic of cultivars was carried out in 5 villages of the Sikasso region in 2007. A trial comprised of two planting dates (18 June and 16 July 2007) was carried out at the agricultural station of Sotuba. The cycles of 29 local varieties were measured. All the tested varieties were photosensitive. Their cycles decreased with delayed planting. The new varieties proposed to the farmers are of the early-maturing type. The researchers and the farmers are convinced that early-maturing cultivars will make it possible to avoid terminal droughts. in fact, landraces originate from ancestral mass selection and are often well adapted to their local environments. Farmers selected photoperiodic varieties the flowering of which is naturally synchronous with the average date of the end of the rainy season. This trait allows pearl millet landraces to bypass the main climatic uncertainty of the zone: the variability of the beginning of the rainy season. The inadequate exploration of the qualities of local varieties by plant breeding programs can explain the rejection of new cultivars by farmers. Plant breeding programs nowadays put emphasis on local germoplasm, rendering farmers' knowledge and expertise perceivable to research analysis.