General background to RTB product profiles

Breeding root, tuber, and banana (RTB) products for end-user preferences (RTBfoods) is a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) investment to encourage increased adoption of improved RTB crop varieties in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The project linked local consumer preferences with breeders’ selection criteria, to ensure adoption along twelve RTB crop value-chains of cassava, yam, sweetpotato, potato and cooking banana products.

To establish these breeder-consumer links, the project developed and applied an interdisciplinary five-step methodology:

1. evaluating the interdisciplinary state of product knowledge; 
2. uncovering gendered food product preferences and mapping priorities;
3. implementing a participatory processing diagnosis and exploring RTB crop quality characteristics; 
4. conducting rural and urban consumer studies using a range of RTB varieties, 
5. identifying demand for quality characteristics among diverse user groups along the food chain. 

For all the RTB crops, data management has been standardized to maximize meaningfulness of comparisons. 

The project is developing high-throughput tools to help breeders select RTB varieties that more effectively meet end-users’ requirements, thereby contributing to greater variety adoption. The project has developed 13 RTB product profiles and is now translating these into market-led breeding initiatives to develop new, end-user–focused RTB varieties in SSA.