Why Gender Matters in Breeding: Lessons from Cooking Bananas in Uganda

Abstract

This study examined the gender-differentiated trait preferences of cooking banana (matooke) for farmers and consumers in Central Uganda to inform banana-breeding strategies. Women and men banana farmers might have differing production objectives, norms, and values which drive decisions on which varieties to adopt and grow. However, breeders rarely consider this in their variety development programs, leading to lost opportunities for equitable breeding. An exploratory sequential mixed-method approach was used to obtain a richer understanding of the trait preferences of women and men, which explains the acceptability of cooking bananas. Consumer preference tests for the candidate banana varieties and released hybrids were also conducted. The results showed that the universal attributes for variety selection were bunch size, taste, resistance to pests and diseases, drought tolerance, food texture/softness, maturity period, and finger size. Men appreciated agronomic and market-related traits, such as tolerance to drought and poor soils, bunch size and compactness, maturity period, and shelf life, while women valued processing and cooking traits such as flavour, food colour, ease of peeling, finger size, and agronomic traits such as plant height. These are plausible attributes for the gender-responsive breeding of bananas. The findings highlight the need to redesign the banana-breeding pipeline and process in Uganda to deliver varieties with attributes desired by women and men along this commodity value chain. A participatory demand-driven and gender-responsive process involving stepwise selection criteria that commences with quality traits followed by production traits while integrating gender-specific preferences should be employed to ensure the acceptability of cooking banana hybrids by women and men end users. This requires integrating different disciplines, including social scientists and gender experts, along the entire breeding process for more inclusive products and equitable outcomes.

Farmer-preferred traits and variety choices for finger millet in Uganda

“…In terms of gender, more men compared to women prefer high yielding varieties, and this is consistent with the finding by Nchanji et al (2021) who reported that men tend to adopt and grow better yielding improved varieties while women tend to grow landraces with low yields. This difference in preferences highlights the diverse roles and responsibilities of men and women in agriculture, influencing their distinct criteria for selecting finger millet varieties (Tufan et al, 2018;Weltzien et al, 2019;Sanya et al, 2020Sanya et al, , 2023Marimo et al, 2021;Zimba et al, 2023). Although there was no significant difference in other traits considered during the production of finger millet, it's evident that similar traits are prioritized differently by men and women.…”

“…Probit model results revealed that gender, marital status, education levels, and occupation are the major socio-demographic factors that influence specific preferences related to the cultivation of finger millet. Gender-related differences in preferences arise from the different roles and responsibilities within households (Sanya et al, 2023;Zimba et al, 2023). Female farmers prioritized millet varieties with big grain size, taste, and ease of cultivation, differently from their male counterparts who prefer varieties that are high yielding, and drought tolerant.…”

“…Gender differences also affect how crops are utilized in postharvest and food processing and marketing and how these are valued by different consumer groups (Weltzien et al, 2019). Previous studies on other crops like cassava, sweet potato, and banana, indicated that gender differences in needs, access, and roles play a big role in the adoption of improved crop technologies including varieties (Tufan et al, 2018;Sanya et al, 2020Sanya et al, , 2023Polar et al, 2021). Finger millet is not an exemption to this trend; thus, the need to integrate gender in all breeding activities to ensure the needs of the end user are integrated into new varieties.…”

Overview of the Current Status of Uganda’s Banana Sector: Formalizing the Matooke Sector may not be the Best Policy Option

“…[11,17] Poor agronomic practices [19] Land use changes by urbanization [19] Labor shortages [19] Banana is mostly produced in three regions of the country, the southwestern, central, and eastern regions [4]. Until the 1990s the central region had been the main banana-producing area, yet the production moved gradually to the west-south where the crop is now grown more commercially [3,22,23]. A study finds 85% of the sampled farms in the southwestern region sold bananas, compared to around 45% in the central and eastern regions [24].…”

“…From the agronomic perspective, key characteristics frequently mentioned are bunch size, finger size, cultivar longevity, marginal soil tolerance, early maturity, drought tolerance, pest resistance, toppling, marketability, appearance, stem sturdiness, and planting material availability. From the consumption perspectives, they include yellow color, homogeneity of the color, moistness, smoothness, moldability, taste, and aroma [2,10,23,31]. Popular local varieties tend to possess some superior qualities both in the agronomic and consumption characteristics, yet no single cultivar meets all preference criteria [10].…”