Gender and variety trait preferences in Uganda, Tanzania, and Mozambique
To ensure better adoption of vitamin-A rich sweetpotato, it is paramount to develop varieties that satisfy the needs and desires of both men and women. Whereas men who farm sweetpotato may prefer qualities such as storability and yields, women will tend to favor taste and cookability.
The SweetGAINS project implemented by the International Potato Center and partners is focusing on this question with studies in Mozambique, Tanzania, and Uganda, hoping to gain insights to help strength markets and value chains for sweetpotato, and, in the process, boosting incomes, and food and nutrition security for millions.
“Prioritizing end-user preferences in variety development is a key strategy toward not only enhancing technology adoption, but also bridging the inherent gender technology adoption gap in the developing world,” says Chalmers Mulwa, a social scientist at CIP.
In other words, Mulwa is saying, agricultural research needs to find ways to encourage technology adoption equally among men and women. In the past, the gap has been large in this respect.
In Uganda, women were found to be more widely involved and experienced in sweetpotato production compared to men. Local landraces – Bunduguza and Kasagaati – were the most preferred varieties by farmers in the study area. These varieties were said to be popular due to various preferable traits such as good taste, high dry matter content, and long underground root storage that allows piece-meal harvesting. Women also preferred agronomic traits such as high yields and drought tolerance. Men, on the other hand, only preferred agronomic traits such as yield and storability.
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