About HarvestPlus

HarvestPlus improves nutrition and public health by developing and promoting biofortified food crops that are rich in vitamins and minerals and providing global leadership on biofortification evidence and technology. HarvestPlus works across CGIAR as part of the Innovation Policy and Scaling Unit of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

Background

The “Expanding Nutrients in Food Systems” (ENFS) project funded by the Government of Canada (2023-2027) aims to increase the consumption of nutritious foods, especially among women, girls, and children under five years of age in smallholder farming households in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Uganda, and Zimbabwe, and increase women’s income by empowering them with agronomic skills and entrepreneurial capacity.

Expanding Nutrients in Food Systems: Gender Strategy

The ENFS project is designed to empower women and transform gender relations in nutritious food systems by strengthening gender equality in access to, utilization of, and control and decision making over, climate-smart nutritious (biofortified) seed and food. It will strengthen our organization’s and our partners’ approaches to gender for wide and lasting learning and impact.

Project experience in target countries and peer-reviewed research demonstrates that gender relations determine bargaining power and intra-household allocation of resources including food, and that women in the ENFS target communities frequently do not have the power to decide how food and other resources are distributed.

Women have less access to water, fuel and other natural resources than men, but bear a higher responsibility to secure them. Agriculture is the top employment sector for women in LMICs, and girls often have to leave school or increase work hours to manage the increased burden of climate change and economic shocks on their agricultural production. Furthermore, climate change is disproportionately impacting access to healthy diets for women and girls, who have the highest micronutrient needs and often eat last and least.

ENFS will contribute to GAC’s Feminist International Assistance Policy by enhancing 1) the protection and promotion of the human rights of women and girls; 2) increasing the participation of women and girls in equal decision-making, particularly when it comes to sustainable development and peace; and 3) giving women and girls more equitable access to and control over the resources they need to secure ongoing economic and social equality.

Biofortified Iron Beans

Biofortification increases the density of micronutrients in staple food crops through conventional plant breeding, agronomic practices, or genetic modification. The result is nutrient-enriched crops that measurably improve nutritional status and health, and reduce the burden of vitamin A, iron, and zinc deficiencies (Bouis HE et al., 2020).

A meta-analysis has shown that daily consumption of iron-biofortified crops – including iron beans – significantly improves iron status and cognition among multiple age groups and across geographies. Moreover, the impact of the additional iron from biofortification had the greatest impact on those with poor iron status.

RCTs and socio-economic studies involving iron beans have specifically shown iron-depleted female university students (18-27 years old) experienced a significant increase in iron status (hemoglobin, serum ferritin, and total body iron) after eating iron beans daily for 4.5 months (Haas, et al., 2016); the improvement in women’s iron status also led to significant improvements in their memory, attention, and ability to do every day physical tasks (Luna et al., 2020; Murray-Kolb et al., 2017; Wenger et al., 2019)- improving their likelihood of reaching their potential at work, school, and home. The cooking time of several biofortified bean varieties (when soaked and not soaked) has been evaluated (Amongi et al., 2023; Muroki et al., 2023). Results indicate variation across varieties that warrants additional research.

Women’s Time Use and Empowerment

The potential for scaling up biofortified crops is reliant in part on farmers’, consumers’, and value chain actors’ acceptance of biofortified crops and willingness to adopt them; one influencing factor is cooking time. For beans, cooking time includes the soaking of beans, and discarding of soaking water before cooking. Consumers value a shorter cooking time (to save energy and time), among other important and preferable traits (such as flavor, texture, size, etc.) (Muroki et al., 2023; Asiimwe et al., 2024). Varieties differ in their cooking time according to their seed coat quality, which determines the absorption of water (dos Santos et al., 2016).

Women’s time-use agency (defined as the confidence and ability to make and act upon strategic choices about how to allocate one’s time (Eissler et al. 2021)) is an essential aspect of women’s empowerment. Interventions or activities that influence the amount of time women spend doing activities can thus have impact on their time-use agency and empowerment. Globally, strongly held social norms mean women bear the primary responsibility for cooking and preparing meals, a responsibility that can take away everyday time from other income-generating activities, education, or leisure. Investments and initiatives to mitigate or reduce the time burden and drudgery of cooking can meaningfully impact the livelihoods, health, and wellbeing of women.

Objective of the RFP – Consultant Role

This study will provide a comparative assessment of workload and resource utilization among women in Uganda associated with cooking selected popular, commercial bean varieties. The assessment will evaluate demands on rural smallholder farming consumers, rural non-farming consumers, and urban consumers.

The bean varieties for evaluation should be selected in consultation with the National Agricultural Research System (NARS), to ensure varieties tested include varieties with known and significant trait differences including cooking time.

The study will not be nationally representative but rather an accurate description of potential impacts in a convenient sample of users who practice the most common bean cooking practices in the country. Other dimensions can also be considered as secondary outcomes (e.g. other time saving technologies; energy efficient cooking technologies, etc.), for example, if these components are part of a larger ongoing study.

Home cooking preparation will be evaluated to measure attributes such as water absorption capacity, cooking time, and cooking yields. Through key informant interviews and targeted focus group discussions a determination of time spent/saved based on each bean variety will be evaluated in the context of women’s productivity and how time saved translates into women’s ability to undertake additional productive ventures in multiple pragmatic dimensions (e.g., childcare, income generation, savings, health care investment/seeking practices, etc.).

Note: To support the study, HarvestPlus/IFPRI will concurrently lead experimental field and laboratory research activities (pending complementarity to the study proposal), including:

1. Review of bean varieties available in Uganda and their characteristics.
2. Assessment and identification of low and high cooking time varieties in the study region (and verification of physical traits of beans tested) via the Uganda NARS to establish cooking time. variability to support recommendations about which varieties to evaluate in the study
3. Oversight of growing the selected varieties and collection of representative samples for characterization of the grain.

Study Deliverables

Findings from this study will be shared with the project donor and are intended to inform bean breeders and policy makers of the varieties that warrant further investment and improvement, and that lead not only to improvements in yield and nutrient intakes, but also women’s empowerment.

1. Complete literature review
2. Study tools (focus group discussion questionnaires, etc.)
3. High quality data set(s), in format suitable for posting to IFPRI Dataverse
4. Technical report, including detailed methodology, findings, conclusions, and recommendations

Study Timeline

1. Expected start of contract: October 2024
2. Duration of study: October 2024 – March 2026
3. Deliverables submitted: September 2026

Proposal

A research protocol (proposal) should be submitted as an attachment to a standard work plan and budget template (which will be provided by HarvestPlus/IFPRI) upon receipt of the principal investigator’s expression of intent to apply by email.

The proposal should consider:

Ethics

It will be the responsibility of the principal investigator to obtain approval of the appropriate ethics/institutional review board (IRB) prior to the initiation of any contact with study subjects. The IRB process will be required before the awarding of the contract is completed. Funds will not be advanced until the IRB approval letter has been submitted, except when project activities are separated into preparatory and implementation phases, in which case funding may be disbursed for the former phase only.

Local Partner (if applicable)

The local partner should be a well-established legal entity in the country where the study will take place who may form partnerships and/or a consortium with other entities within or outside the country to provide the necessary expertise and resources to carry out the project. HarvestPlus will contract directly with the lead institution in a consortium or partnership and that institution will be responsible for the dealings with the other parties. The recipient institutions must submit copies of their corporate documents prior to awarding a contract.

Research Group Qualifications

The CVs of each lead researcher (including local partners) shall be submitted with the proposal. The CVs should clearly illustrate the researchers’ qualifications, publications, expertise, and experience in relation to the component of the project that he/she will be responsible for, and references for all relevant peer-reviewed publications.

Project Study Site(s)

The study site within Uganda will be at the discretion of the research team.

Other items to be included in the proposal:

• Title page with main investigator contact details
• Background information (brief literature review) demonstrating in-dept understanding of the request for proposals and the subject matter of the research under consideration
• Study aims and specific objectives
• Description of the main and secondary outcomes, sample size calculation for primary and secondary outcomes, study design, selection and exclusion of subjects, methodology, and data analysis plan
• Clear study timeline outlining all major milestones and deliverables (as a Gantt chart, or other appropriate format)
• Any other relevant aspects critical for the success of the study such as relevant ongoing studies and available complimentary funding

Application Timeline