In this last year of the project, the objective of this second special issue in preparation is to promote the results of the RTBfoods project and in particular to widely share the methods developed to measure post-harvest quality traits that meet the expectations of consumers and -mainly female- processors of RTBs. This special issue will also include the first results on the genetic determinants of certain essential quality traits such as cooking ability and the yield in ready-to-eat end-product.

The writeshop participants benefited from the support of Clair Hershey and Hernan Ceballos, whose extensive experience RTB crops will be key to guide the authors in the writing of the manuscripts until submission to the journal, planned by end of December 2022.

Almost forty manuscripts have already been proposed to the editorial committee. The selection will take into account key criteria such as the participation of several institutes, multidisciplinarity and of course, respect for the editorial line of the JSFA journal.

During these 3 days, the participants also spent half a day on a small workshop on RTBfoods outcome mapping. This session was led by a consultant, Agathe Devaux-Spatarakis (QUADRANT conseil), and the ImpresS-CIRAD team working on impact of research at CIRAD (Claudio Proietti, Aurelle de Romémont).

This workshop made it possible to identify the major changes in terms of knowledge, practices and interactions among the users targeted by the project, namely the RTB breeders and food scientists. The next step is an online survey which should be launched in August 2022 to quantitatively inform some of these major project outcomes.