2020 Technical Report - Breeding RTB products for end user preferences (RTBfoods) - Bioversity International Activities & Achievements in Period 3

Abstract

This report highlights progress made by Bioversity International (now Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT) in the implementation of the RTBFoods project during Period 3 (November 2019 – November 2020). During this period, activities focused on Work Packages 1 and 2. For WP1, the main activities included: data collection (market trader interviews in Nakaseke district), data processing, analysis and report writing for Activities 3, 4 and 5. Achievements included finalised report for Activity 3, advanced draft reports for Activities 4, 5, gender specific output and co-authorship in a paper published in the international Journal of Food Science and Technology. Under WP1, Moreen Asasira an MS student in Agricultural Economics at Makerere University, Uganda, progressed well in her thesis and has submitted the first draft for review by university supervisors. Her work focuses on urban consumer preferences. For WP2, the main work involved preliminary identification and prioritisation of the key traits for WP2 to dissect based on Activity 3 results in collaboration with the Uganda matooke team. Willy Nelson Kisenyi an MS student in Food Science at Kyambogo University, Uganda successfully defended his MS thesis titled, ‘Physicochemical and sensory properties of selected local and hybrid cooking bananas (matooke) in Uganda’. His supervision was shared between Bioversity, NARL and Kyambogo University. Under WP2 work related to the ontologies, lexicon elements were extracted into a specific dictionary format in collaboration with the food scientists and an internship by Amos Asiimwe an MS student in Human Nutrition at Makerere University, Uganda. Steps were taken to get a food product ontology enabling the Breedbases to integrate the sensory traits measurements produced by trained sensory panels in WP2. Resulting validated food product property dictionaries for matooke, boiled cassava and boiled sweet potato are uploaded on the RTB platform. As part of the ontology work, Bioversity spearheaded the formation of a banana ’expert’ group comprising of breeders, social scientists, gender researchers and food scientists from Bioversity, NARL and IITA to validate some of the traits and their definitions. The group will continue to interact regularly, and this platform can be used to discuss related work and future potential collaborations. Bioversity codeveloped presentations that were disseminated by other RTBFoods colleagues at three workshops (RTBfoods project monthly webinars, GREAT Virtual Symposium and French Agency for Research conference). Capacity development has been an integral part of Bioversity’s work and to that effect two master’s students and an intern contributed to various work packages of the project.