Iowa State Awarded Funds to Improve Nutrition in Africa

from Wisconsin Ag Connection

Iowa State University's Center for Sustainable Rural Livelihoods has been awarded a $450,000 grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development to enhance nutritional value and marketability of common beans in Uganda and Rwanda.

"Testing whether yield improving technologies result in beans with better nutritive value or processing characteristics is an important under-researched issue in this region," said Robert Mazur, director of the Center for Sustainable Rural Livelihoods and lead investigator of the project, which begins this year and ends in 2010. "Activities will contribute to sustainable livelihoods of small scale farmers and their families, providing food security and income to the most vulnerable group, the women and children."

Results of the research are expected to significantly improve yields and quality of beans varieties, enhance nutritional value and marketability of beans and increase marketing and consumption of beans and value-added bean products. Funding for the project comes from the U.S. Agency for International Development's Dry Grain Pulses Collaborative Research Support Program.

Since 2004, ongoing collaboration of the Center for Sustainable Rural Livelihoods, Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, and a nongovernmental organization in Uganda have worked to improve food security and market readiness among 800 farm households in Uganda. "Our research approach is seen as a potential model for other parts of sub-Saharan African where beans, or pulses, are an integral part of traditional cropping systems," said Mazur.

Mazur said the research will help meet the international community's Millennium Development Goals of reducing hunger and poverty, since improved bean production, processing and consumption in Uganda and Rwanda can help address deteriorating food security there and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa.

Other researchers in the project include Iowa State faculty in food science and human nutrition, agronomy and economics, and scientists at Makerere University in Uganda, the National Crops Resources Research Institute in Uganda, Volunteer Efforts for Development Concerns in Uganda and Kigali Institute of Science and Technology in Rwanda.