Tricot trial recruitment

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Participant recruitment

Anyone who wishes to participate can get involved in a tricot experiment. Recruiting as many motivated participants as possible is key to the success of the project. The local field agents should help to identify and recruit participants in their communities.

Hanging posters in agricultural shops, village halls or corner shops may also help to attract attention. You do not need to know the participants before the trial.

However, participants should be:

• volunteers who are ready to commit time and effort to participation;
• enjoy experimenting and trying out new methods;
• both women and men, preferably at an even ratio.

Participant group dynamics and communication

Carrying out a group or joint trial makes the learning process easier and participation more fun. Any existing group, like farmers’ committees, credit cooperatives, or a religious group can receive a trial package and participate together. In this case, a ‘host’ farm is needed, where the technology options can be tested. The host farmer will be the contact person for the local field agent, while all activities – such as planting and making the trial observations – can be performed jointly by the group. In the following season, individual group members may want to plant a trial for themselves, building on the experiences they gained in the group trial. To enhance the participation of women farmers, it can be useful to establish ‘women’s research groups’, who would be in charge of a number of tricot plots.

During tricot trials, farmers interact mainly through trusted local networks and group-based collaboration. Strong relationships with local extension officers help mobilize farmers smoothly, build trust, and increase farmers’ sense of ownership—making them more open to trying new ideas. Farmers who participate through organized groups showed greater solidarity and are more likely to support activities endorsed by their leaders. Communication and coordination can be strengthened through digital tools such as a shared WhatsApp group that connects lead farmers with researchers and extension staff, enabling quick, real-time information exchange.

Tricot as an iterative process

For on-farm trials, farmers ideally participate more than once in different experiments and across different seasons. When a tricot project starts and farmers participate for the first time, upfront project investments are required. The local field agents must be trained. Also, setting up and implementing the training workshops for participating farmers takes time. During their first cycle, farmers may have many questions and need assistance from local field agents. As the farmers will learn many things during each iteration of the process, and as they get to know only three randomly chosen technology options per cycle, we would encourage farmers to participate repeatedly. This way, first-time farmers can ask their more experienced farmer-colleagues when they have doubts, and the farmers get the chance to experiment with new sets of technology options with every cycle.