Symposium on Gender Responsive Crop Breeding: Community Research Showcase

On Tuesday, November 24th, 2020, Gender Responsive Researchers Equipped for Agricultural Transformation (GREAT) will host its first virtual Symposium on Gender Responsive Crop Breeding: Community Research Showcase. The live event will be accessible by Zoom and Facebook Live. The broadcast will begin at the following regional times on November 24, 2020:

• 8 a.m. EST (New York),
• 1 p.m. GMT (London),
• 2 p.m. WAT (Abuja),
• 4 p.m. EAT (Kampala)
• 5:30 p.m. IST (New Delhi)
• 8 p.m. WIB (Jakarta)

The event will bring together interdisciplinary research teams of plant breeders, pathologists, socio-economists, anthropologists, food processing and quality experts from more than 10 countries in Anglo and Francophone sub-Saharan Africa to share their work.  The  presenters are from a range of institutions including National agricultural research Institutions, Universities, and CG Centres. The event will summarize these research teams’ work  to produce crop improvement focused agricultural research that delivers equitable benefits to women, men, boys, and girls.  Since its establishment in 2016, GREAT has trained more than 250 professionals in gender responsive agricultural research methods.

A full program of the event will be available at greatagriculture.org.

The talks will be presented by teams formerly trained by GREAT, as well as GREAT mentors and trainers.  There will also be a panel presentation featuring speakers from the gender and plant breeding ecosystem. The presentations will revolve around gendered participatory varietal selection, gender dynamics in breeding systems, intrahousehold relations influencing seed access among others.  

Key presentations at the Symposium on Gender Responsive Crop Breeding: Community Research Showcase will include,

• Dynamics of Farm Work, Household Duties and Labour Engagement for Men and Women in Maize Production in Northern Ghana by Eyram Natson;
• Gendered varietal and trait preferences of common bean value chain actors in Uganda: Implications for breeding by Eileen Nchanji; 
• Gender dynamics in banana seed systems and impacts on banana bunchy top disease recovery in Cameroon, by GREAT Fellows Lillian Nkengla and Bonaventure Omondi;
• Insights and lessons from gender-responsive RTB food product profiling studies in East and West Africa by Lora Forsthye; and 
• Reflections on Gender Integration at the Feed the Future Innovation Lab by Jessica Marter Kenyon.