CIALs (Committees For Local Agricultural Research) are community level organisations for helping agricultural scientists and farmers to collaborate on adaptive research. Although CIALs have been used mainly for testing new crops and varieties, an unorthodox project in Peru and Bolivia recently used CIALs with a range of research techniques: formal trials, participatory research and farmers' own experiments. It is also combining CIALs with farmer field schools (FFS). The result is many new, chemical free technologies for managing an introduced disease that is difficult to observe and hard to manage. Copyright © 2006 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.