Co-created project: Citizens participate in all stages of the scientific process.

Overall goal: Build an open seed exchange and breeding network to offer alternative solutions to the challenges of agriculture, based on collective intelligence, open knowledge, local know-how and scientific knowledge. Specific goals: Create technical and legal tools to guarantee the continuous circulation of germplasm for research and development purposes, with the aim to enhance the role of farmers in seed conservation and breeding. Generate a greater availability of biodiverse and resilient seeds, considered as a commons; contribute to food and technological sovereignty as well as to biological, cultural, and economic diversity.

Description of citizen participation: Bioleft is a community for the conservation, exchange, and breeding of open seeds that offers alternative solutions to the challenges of agriculture, through the co-design of tools for conservation, dissemination and open and collaborative seed breeding. The licenses and the digital platform are co-designed with multiple stakeholders, and they are constantly reviewed and improved based on their contributions. The project involves agricultural producers using different farming practices (from organic production to family farming), who innovate in the seeds they produce, specialists in plant breeding, research teams from public institutions (such as the School of Agricultural Studies at the University of Buenos Aires and the National Institute of Agricultural Technology) and activists of Citizen Science and free software. Based on the needs shared by these stakeholders, a digital platform is designed for the following purposes: • Identify and connect sustainable agriculture actors through the “community” section. • Record, map and transfer seeds. • Monitor seed circulation through different stakeholders of the agricultural sector. • Collect valuable information through a “field notebook”. • Promote knowledge sharing and participatory and/or collaborative improvement

Time frame. 2016 – N/A

Project leaders. Antoine Patalano, School of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences (FCEFyN), National University of Córdoba (UNC) and the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) in Argentina • Leandro Masso, FCEFYN/UNC and CONICET • Carlos Marcelo García Rodríguez, FCEFYN/UNC and CONICET

Contact information. Emails: A.Marin@ids.ac.uk ; acremaschi@unsam.edu.ar Web: bioleft.org Instagram: instagram.com/bioleft_ LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/biolef