Results from the first season of analysis for 8 cassava varieties

A challenge observed is the nature of RTB crops which demand more strategic logistics as the ‘seed’ of RTB crops are not grains but cuttings, suckers or vines. These are bulkier and can be stored for a limited amount of time. Because of this also less pronounced seed systems exist for RTB crops, which can also be considered an advantage to use tricot as an extra important variety dissemination strategy when compared to the approach within grain crops. Participatory variety evaluation efforts have sometimes failed in the past because of their failure to work within established research and extension systems. A main challenge for the project will be to forge lasting collaborations between research and extension around the tricot approach, and to embed the tricot approach in work routines. This means that to the extension system we need to demonstrate that tricot facilitates their work and provides them with tools to generate recommendation domains. It also means we need to demonstrate to research institutes the scientific value of the results (data quality, representation of target population environments, validity of the results).