Eritrea's economy is largely based on subsistence agriculture, with over 80% of the population living in rural areas and depending on farming and livestock production. The staple crops are barley (16% of total food production) and wheat, mostly produced in the highlands, with lentil, chickpea and faba bean which provide the main portion of the daily protein requirement. The country is rich in diversity of the most important crops. Diversity is also part of the tradition of the farmers who 1) grow different crops, 2) grow different cultivars; 3) grow landraces which are mixtures of different genotypes, and 4) mix different crops, such a barley and wheat in a system known as hanfets. The latter, common also in Tigray, is a highly sophisticated way to cope with the very unpredictable nature of dry lands that will become increasingly more unpredictable with climate change. The paper describes a project that seeks to enhance food security and to alleviate poverty in the Atbara river basin. The major features of the project are 1) the use of participatory research approaches, centered on participatory varietal selection and plant breeding; 2) the use of local germplasm from the National gene bank; 3) the trials are conducted in farmers' fields and the key decisions are taken by the farmers (both men and women); 4) all the work is implemented by Eritrean scientists, and therefore it has an important training component. The selection within the local landraces conducted by farmers under their conditions of agronomic management is producing yields increases of up to 20% in barley, 31% in wheat, almost double in lentil, and 6% in faba bean.