Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Horticulture

This project aims to improve nutrition in Ghanaians and Malians through diet diversification by valorizing indigenous fruits and vegetables and promoting their consumption. This will be achieved through an assessment of value chain to profile and identify cultural properties of indigenous fruits and vegetables to understand regional demand and supply, characterize them in terms of agronomic practices, nutritional composition, postharvest practices and value addition potential.

Researching youth engagement with school gardens focused on indigenous vegetables, and necessary input supply chains to support indigenous vegetable production, to increase youth engagement in indigenous vegetable agriculture and reduce poor nutrition related outcomes among youths.

The theory of change in this project identified the problem of losses in horticultural crops during the pre-harvest, post-harvest and marketing stages in Uganda. The overall goal of this project is to increase financial independence and improve the livelihoods of small-scale women vegetable farmers. To achieve this goal, we will evaluate different agronomic practices for reduced loss; evaluate different postharvest practices for reduced loss in vegetables; and evaluate different marketing and market access strategies for vegetables by women farmers. This is expected to lead to improved household nutrition status; increased sales of vegetables; and increased household income status of small-scale women farmers.

By increasing understandings of the trade-offs of short horticulture value chains versus long horticulture value chains, and the impact of ICT on those value chains, researchers will have critical information to guide where future interventions and innovations should be focused to achieve specific types of outcomes and avoid unintended harmful impacts from scaling/interventions. Furthermore, by collecting this data, researchers outside of Kenya can use the findings and approach as a framework for replication

The rapid urbanization in Bangladesh and Nepal is making the city dwellers vulnerable for their food and nutrition and primarily dependent on the supply chain from the rural areas. Also, it has been a challenge to enhance the production of fruits and vegetables in urban and peri-urban areas due to the limited supply of quality planting materials. By addressing these issues can contribute to increasing urban communities’ access to demand-based nutrient-rich fruits and vegetables, which can contribute to achieving food and nutritional security.

As a collaborator with the Nutrition Innovation Lab at Tufts University, this research team is implementing three horticultural technologies and analyzing the impacts of these interventions on household nutrition and dietary diversity.

The goal of this project is to understand how integrated animal-horticulture systems are most feasible for smallholders by rigorously addressing — through interdisciplinary research — the potential of these systems with regard to sustainable production capacity, income generation, and gender dimensions.