Record Details

Gender mainstreaming in sweet potato breeding in Uganda

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Title Gender mainstreaming in sweet potato breeding in Uganda
 
Creator Ssali, Reuben T.
Mayanja, Sarah
Nakitto, Mariam
Mwende, Janet
Tinyiro, Samuel Edgar
Bayiyana, Irene
Okello, Julius
Forsythe, Lora
Magala, Damalie
Yada, Benard
Mwanga, Robert O.
Polar, Vivian
 
Subject gender
agriculture
research
plant breeding
sweet potatoes
 
Description Purpose: In Uganda, sweet potato is typically a “women’s crop” grown by smallholder farmers for food and income. Farmers value sweet potato for its early maturity, resilience to stresses, and minimal input requirements. However, productivity remains low despite the effort of breeding programs to introduce new varieties. Low uptake of new varieties is partly attributed to previous focus by breeders on agronomic traits and much less on quality traits and the diverse preferences of men and women in sweet potato value chains. Method: To address this gap, breeders, food scientists, and social scientists (including gender specialists) systematically mainstreamed gender into the breeding program. This multidisciplinary approach, grounded in examining gender roles and their relationship with varietal and trait preferences, integrated important traits into product profiles. Results: Building on earlier efforts of participatory plant breeding and participatory varietal selection, new interventions revealed subtle but important gender differences in preferences. For instance, in a study for the RTBfoods project, women prioritized mealiness, sweetness, firmness and nonfibrous boiled roots. These were further subjected to a rigorous gender analysis using the G+ product profile query tool (Ashby and Polar, 2021; CGIAR 2021). The breeding pipelines then incorporated these gender-responsive priority quality traits, prompting the development of standard operating procedures to phenotype the PQTs. Conclusion: The product advancement and joint decision-making meetings have further positioned sweet potato breeding to better respond to the varying needs and preferences of the users
 
Date 2023-10-10
2024-01-04T12:46:23Z
2024-01-04T12:46:23Z
 
Type Presentation
 
Identifier Ssali, Reuben T.; Mayanja, Sarah; Nakitto, Mariam; Mwende, Janet; Tinyiro, Samuel Edgar; Bayiyana, Irene; Okello, Julius; Forsythe, Lora; Magala, Damalie; Yada, Benard; Mwanga, Robert O.; Polar, Vivian. 2023. Gender mainstreaming in sweet potato breeding in Uganda. Presentation. Presented at the CGIAR GENDER Conference 'From Research to Impact: Towards just and resilient agri-food systems', New Delhi, India, 9-12 October 2023. International Potato Center
https://hdl.handle.net/10568/136926
 
Language en
 
Rights Other
Open Access
 
Format application/pdf
 
Publisher International Potato Center