Sweetpotato targeted product profiles alignment to market knowledge by NARS programs in Southern Africa

Makunde, G., Musundire, L., Taula, A., Mtonga, A., Serenje, G., Philime, M., Lindqvist-Kreuze, H. 2024. Sweetpotato targeted product profiles alignment to market knowledge by NARS programs in Southern Africa. A Poster presented at the CGIAR Unitiative on Market Intelligence WP1-WP2 Workshop, 14-18 October 2024, Harare, Zimbabwe.

To enhance the efficiency and impact of sweetpotato breeding teams in Southern Africa the development and alignment of targetted product profiles to market segments was top priority in Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Multidisciplinary product development teams were constituted in each country to develop targetted product profiles, prioritize key traits that lead to adoption and increase performance of new varieties. The key results were each country developed two targetted product profiles which addressed the market requirements of the white flesh, drought, heat and salinity prone environments and orange flesh, drought, heat and salinity prone environments of southern Africa. The teams defined sweetpotato market segments in terms of size and dominant varieties per segment (release dates, market share, key strengths and weaknesses) for each country. NARS program assessment was carried out and improvement plans developed and documented for partner. One of cross cutting recommendations was strengthening collaboration with third parties to establish regular germplasm exchange with other NARES targeting similar target product profiles. Pathways to improve collaborations across countries were laid down, and one outcome was sharing of elite clones from International Potato Center breeding program in Mozambique to all countries for further testing and release by national partners.