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Incorporating gender-sensitive traits in breeding programs
Mar. 18, 2016•0 likes•618 views
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Presented by Steve Beebe, International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) at the Joint Pan African Grain Legumes and World Cowpea Conference
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Incorporating gender-sensitive traits in breeding programs
- Incorporating Gender-Sensitive Traits in Breeding Programs
- Joint traits • Marketability, color, size, price • Earliness • Yield • Taste • Cooking time • Uniform maturity • Storability • Nutritional value Women’s traits • Drought tolerance • Disease resistance Men’s traits Gender-discriminated Traits (2015, Uganda and W. Kenya) UGANDA • Grain color • Grain size • Intercropping • Plant arquitecture • Palatable leaves • Resistance to biotic stresses • Resistance to poor soil • Early maturity W.KENYA
- Gender roles in bean production and marketing, Uganda Women dominated most bean production activities and also made most decisions in bean production and marketing.
- The Value of Short Cooking time • Industrial processing: – Women could save 9 hours per week with pre-cooked beans • For home cooking: – Part of this time could be recovered with fast cooking beans….maybe 4 or 5 hours per week • If breeders had this sort of data on the impact of gender, they would adopt “gender traits” more readily
- Incorporating Cooking Time • Conceptual obstacles? – “We breed for productivity” • Infrastructural limitations – Breeders work with dozens or hundreds of lines – How to quantify and scale up cooking time?
- Breeding for Processing Traits is not New Ugandan Bean Lines
- The Matteson Bean Cooker • Long established laboratory method • Very slow – 1 sample takes 30 minutes to 2 hours • Requires automation
- Automation for Scaling up the Phenotyping
- Nutrition: Gender or Biology? • Women have different nutritional needs – Iron requirements • Biofortification seeks to address these needs with a trait (high iron) for which women may never express preference
- -1.00 0.00 1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 6.00 Hb, g/L Ferritin, µg/L sTfR, mg/L Body Iron, mg/kg Low Iron High Iron ns p=0.059 P<0.001 p=0.011 Effects of Biofortified Beans on Iron status of Young Women ChangeinIronStatus LSMeansbaselineto4.5months DRAFT-NO NOT CITE OR REPRODUCE
- Nutrition: Gender or Biology? Care-givers Community / Family Nutrition Specific Nutritional Needs Women Children
- Even if Nutrition is not the same as Gender… • …it can be a priority area for interaction, and in support of breeding and adoption • For example, Orange fleshed sweet potatoes – Visibly VERY different • Through nutritional education, mothers became convinced that for the benefit of their children, OFSP were worth the change • This is where gender research can intersect productively with biofortification and breeding
- Conclusions • We would benefit from broader information on how general a given preference is, especially in a dynamic environment – (not unlike an agronomic trait) • Beyond lists of gender preferences, understanding the impact of traits with gender implications would encourage breeders to engage • Breeding for gender traits like cooking time? Where there’s a will, there’s a way (usually) • Nutrition? Where are the productive points of contact with breeding for nutritional value?
- • Asante sana
Editor's Notes
- First a comparison of survey results from two regions in Uganda and Western Kenya. In Uganda there was very little distinction between men and women. Both expressed interest in market traits (traditionally associated with men) and in culinary traits (traditionally associated with women) In W Kenya, again there were more traits in common than not. On the surface this is good. A breeder can work with only one list of traits. However, the list is long, and a better understanding of gender implications would help prioritize. It is noteworthy that in both Uganda and Kenya, both men and women were concerned with markets. Is this a change compared to the past?
- In a separate survey in Uganda, women indeed were found to participate very actively in marketing, so are gender roles shifting? If so, are there implications for breeding priorities and traits? Do we downplay the traditional traits associated with women in favor of market traits? Social settings are dynamic. What are the implications of a dynamic situation for prioritization of traits, including gender sensitive traits?
- Let’s go back to cooking time that many surveys have highlighted as a trait favoring women. In a project in East Africa, pre-cooked beans are being analyzed as an option for both urban and rural households. In a study of the gender component, it was suggested that women could save 9 hours a week with pre-cooked beans. This drives home the burden that bean cooking places on women, from the gathering of firewood to hours spent in the kitchen or over a wood fire. Fast cooking beans would not have all the same impact as pre-cooked beans, but could certainly recover part of this time spent in cooking. This highlights the value of more discriminating analysis of gender roles and the gender implications of innovations that is not revealed in simple surveys. Breeders would engage more readily if the benefits of such gender sensitive innovations were spelled out in terms of real benefits. Such analysis would be far more informative to focus priorities and resources.
- So HOW TO…? One can imagine conceptual obstacles of traditional breeding traits and goals. But beyond these, there are practical issues to be overcome. Selection for any trait requires efficient and effective phenotyping methods. Phenotyping does not necessarily take place in the field. In this case phenotyping is an evaluation of cooking time.
- Breeding for processing traits such as canning quality is not new. Semi-industrial processes are in place for such traits, and comparable processes need to be in place for cooking time.
- Bean cooking time has typically been measured with an apparatus called the Matteson bean cooker. Beans are boiled in a pot of water with a pin bearing down on each grain, and when the pin transfixes the bean, it is judged to be cooked. This is a great way to spend a grad student’s time, watching the pins fall. One bean variety can take from 30 minutes to 2 hours. How many months will it take to evaluate hundreds of lines coming out of a breeding program.
- Phenotyping is effective when it is automated, and the Matteson cooker can be automated with a few simple sensors that detect the fall of the pins. Sensors are connected to a computer and voila! The grad student can go on a two hour coffee break! This illustrates a general principal for any trait within a breeding program. Evaluations – or phenotyping – must be fast, reliable, and capable of dealing with large numbers (hundreds of thousands) of breeding lines. Cooking time is not a special case. It simply needs to be automated and adopted.
- A second area is one that relies on external experts formulating priorities. Nutrition. Is this gender? Let us look. Nutrition is much broader than gender. It is a biological issue, it has its own disciplinary community and methods, and many gender experts would consider it outside the purview of gender. Its approaches are certainly very different. That said, there are clear cut distinctions in nutritional needs…on the one hand with women…and on the other hand with children. However, even if we consider that these nutritional distinctions are not properly gender differences, the role of women as care givers and in assuring a nutritious diet for their children is properly a subject of gender.
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