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Genebanks explore new partnerships with farmers and other user groups to provide smallholder farmers in Africa better access to crop diversity for improved nutrition, climate change adaptation and agricultural diversification. This paper shows how the World Vegetable Center (WorldVeg) genebank of traditional African vegetables and its partners distributed over 42,000 seed kits containing over 183,000 vegetable seed samples from 2013 to 2017 to smallholder farmers in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda. The seed kits contained seed samples of promising accessions and open-pollinated breeding lines of traditional African vegetables, and to a lower degree of tomato, Capsicum pepper and soybean, usually enough to plant in a home garden. We identified four research questions to better understand the role of vegetable seed kits in strengthening local seed systems, impact on local vegetable diversity, improving human nutrition and supporting climate-resilient agriculture. As formal seed systems expand their reach, the genebank's role to supply vegetable diversity to public and private breeding programmes becomes more important. To optimize supply of vegetable diversity, the WorldVeg genebank of traditional African vegetables continues working with partners in both formal and local seed systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a lack of evidence for impact at scale of vegetable research and development, although the importance of vegetables for human nutrition and smallholder incomes is generally understood. We therefore study adoption and impact of improved tomato and African eggplant varieties developed through international agricultural research, released by national agricultural research and extension systems, and supplied to farmers by private seed companies in East and Southern Africa from 1990 to 2014. The study finds that in 2014, varieties developed by the World Vegetable Center accounted for 50% of tomato and 98% of African eggplant commercial seed production in East and Southern Africa. For Tanzania alone, investment in crop improvement generated economic gains of US$ 255 million for tomato and US$ 5 million for African eggplant up to 2014. The internal rate of return is 26% for tomato and 12% for African eggplant, though we project the latter to increase to 26% by 2024 as the variety was released only in 2007. These findings support the view that agricultural policy and investment reoriented towards contemporary nutritional challenges will give high returns to investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• There is a lack of evidence for impact of home garden interventions in Africa. • We analyzed the impact of a home garden project in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. • Results show only weak effects on household vegetable production. • Results show no significant effect on vegetable consumption in the month of the survey. • There is a need to better understand barriers to home garden interventions in Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa has the lowest per capita consumption of vegetables of all regions in the world. As low vegetable consumption is associated with poor human health, there is need for effective policies and interventions to increase it. Home garden interventions have proven effective in several countries in Asia, but evidence from large trials is scant in Africa. Using data from a home garden promotion project in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, this study tests the hypothesis that home garden interventions, offered to rural households with women 14–35 years of age and/or with children under five years of age, increase household production and consumption of vegetables. Three randomized controlled trials collected pre- and post-intervention data (2 years apart) for 1,255 intervention and control households. We report intent-to-treat effects and the treatment effect on the treated and analyze distributional effects using quantile regression. For Tanzania, the results show a 20% increase in households producing vegetables and an additional two months of vegetable harvesting, but no such significant effects were found for Kenya and Uganda. We find no significant effects on diets. Lack of impact may be explained from the fact that many participating households were already producing vegetables (reducing the scope for impact) and a low participation rate of selected households in training events. These results stand in contrast to the positive impacts of home garden interventions in Asia. The results suggest a need to better understand barriers to home garden interventions in the three countries and a need for more careful design, local adaptation and targeting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]