‘Matooke’ is a staple food made from Highland cooking bananas in the Great Lakes region of East Africa. Genetic improvement of these bananas for resistance to pests and diseases has been a priority breeding objective. However, there is insufficient information on fruit quality characteristics that different users prefer, resulting in sub-optimal adoption of new varieties. This study identified matooke characteristics preferred by farmers and traders, using quantitative survey data from 123 farmers and 17 traders. The main characteristics that were found to drive variety preferences were agronomic (big bunch, big fruits) and quality (soft texture, good taste, good aroma, yellow food). There were minimal geographical and gender differences for trait preferences.

This study showed that famers and traders in the western Uganda food chain for matooke give priority to characteristics that influence market acceptance. In the central region, consumers attach less importance to food colour compared to the western region. Generally, traders look for characteristics that buyers ask for when purchasing the banana bunches.

Women and men mention the same characteristics with minimal differences in the proportions reporting certain characteristics and in the assigned rankings. More women mention characteristics related to the preparation process for example ease of peeling, thin peel and soft peel as they are mostly responsible for food preparation. Colour of the peel-shiny light green fruits, and sap content are also important attributes for women.

Soft texture, good aroma, yellow colour, good matooke taste and matooke that holds together when mashed are generally important characteristics for matooke end-users. Indeed, varieties that lack these characteristics are often rejected. Characteristics that are not liked include; hard texture, too soft or watery matooke, pale yellow colour and flat taste. Varieties with such characteristics are often rejected.

The RTBfoods project focuses its efforts on the transfer of quality traits identified by the surveys to physical-chemical characteristics and translated into high-throughput phenotyping tools such as NIRS[1], for efficient and effective selection of user-acceptable hybrids.

[1] Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS)