Tools for understanding the agricultural production systems and their socio-economic context in target regions for the introduction of new banana cultivars: baseline intra-household survey.

Abstract

Within the framework of the IITA-led project “Improvement of banana for smallholder farmers in the Great Lakes region of Africa” (also known as the “Breeding Better Bananas” project, http://breedingbetterbananas.org), Bioversity International and partners conducted baseline research in the target regions of Luwero and Mbarara in Uganda, and Bukoba, Meru, Moshi and Rungwe in Tanzania during 2015-2016, prior to conducting on-station and on-farm evaluations of the new NARITA banana cultivars.

Five tools were used to characterise the banana and agricultural production systems, and the socioeconomic context of these systems, in the target regions. The research used a mixed-methods, participatory and sex-disaggregated approach to ensure that the knowledge, experiences and opinions of as many people as possible were obtained.

The understanding gained from the baseline research will: • Be fed into the banana breeding pipeline at multiple entry points to assist with breeding banana cultivars that better meet the requirements of the users. Some of these entry points are: setting of breeding targets; selection of parent material; evaluation in regional on-station and on-farm trials; participatory varietal selection taking into account the criteria (or ‘trait preferences’) that are important to multiple and different users; facilitating access to and adoption of the new cultivars by farmers and other end-users through scaling up the supply of clean planting materials and ensuring equitable distribution of these through the ‘seed’ systems. • Inform the ongoing adaptive management of the project activities to ensure fair participation and decision-making by people in the affected communities. • Provide the baseline to evaluate, in conjunction with the endline, the impact of adoption of the new cultivars on households, and individuals within, in the target regions.