The presenl paper focuses on one appralsal methodology: Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), and on its use for Irrigation Management Research (IMR). As will be discussed in the following sections, to link these two topics requires two initial c1arif?cations. The first clarification relates to lhe identiflcation of the boundaries of irrigation management research (what do we call irrigation management?). The second clarification focuses on the definition of PRA and its specificities versus other types of participatory approaches and techniques that have been developed and implemented in development and research activities for the last 20 years. A very specific portion only of the long list of participatory approaches similar to PRA that have been used in the field of irrigation management will be discussed in the present paper.