Cassava traits and end-user preferences

Over the past decades, many cassava varieties have been developed and deployed. Significant and relevant progress has been made in improving food security depending on these crops by increasing yields and the stability of performance through resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses. The deployment of new cassava varieties, has identified weaknesses in terms of end-use quality. Cassava breeders generally lack access to the selection tools needed to evaluate end use quality early enough in the program. The lack of participatory approaches, the scarcity of genotype by environment analyses, and their consequent effect on postharvest criteria, and acknowledgement of socio-economic and cultural contexts differences, in breeding design have often led to lower than expected rates of adoption of new cassava varieties. RTBfoods project multifaceted team (Social science, food technologist, breeders) will (1) Define what are the key user-preferred quality traits for a range of cassava food products through surveys with cassava users, i.e. processors and consumers, as well as farmers and traders or middlemen (product profiles); (2) Link these product profiles with biophysical, sensorial and functional properties of cassava food products, and develop laboratory-based methods to assess these properties in a quantitative manner; (3) Develop high-throughput phenotyping protocols (HTPP) for rapid screening of user-preferred quality traits in new cassava varieties; (4) Integrate key user traits into breeding and variety deployment programs. Future breeding efforts need to guarantee that the resulting products not only stand out for their agronomic performance but also meet the expectations of different actors in the value chain, particularly processors and other end-users as consumers, taking gender and social differences into account at all stages of iteration