L'évaluation du projet RTBFoods

L'évaluation du projet RTBFoods du CIRAD, à laquelle notre collègue Agathe Devaux-Spatarakis a été publiée sur le site Agritop. Ce projet vise à favoriser l'adoption de meilleures variétés de légumes racines, tubéreux et de bananes, au bénéfice des agriculteurs/rices africain·es. L'évaluation a notamment permis d'expérimenter un atelier de recueil des incidences, qui a permis de comparer les effets perçus avec les objectifs initiaux. C'était aussi l'occasion de tester des modalités d'enquête permettant d'interroger à la fois les changements de pratique et les contributions du projet à ces changements, sans que l'enquête ne représente un poids trop important pour les concerné·es.

This study has been undertaken as part of the final assessment of the project. It helped the project team in assessing the progress made toward the expected outcomes and in formulating recommendations for the way forward. It was also part of Cirad's institutional efforts to promote a “culture of impact”. The study was funded and supported by Cirad as first pilot of an internal mechanism fostering the use of impact and outcome evaluations as reflexive exercises to generate knowledge and learn lessons on the contributions and contribution pathways of research to societal impacts. The evaluation was realized between June and December 2022 by a mixed evaluation team composed by one external evaluator from Quadrant Conseil, one evaluator from Cirad ImpresS team and the RTBfoods project manager for monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL). The outcome harvesting method has been adapted and used. Participatory workshops, exploratory interviews, an online survey, in-depth bilateral interviews and documentary analysis were used as main tools for the identification and the substantiation of project outcomes. The evaluation found that the project strengthened partners' capacities for the development and use of: • participatory and gender-sensitive methods and tools to understand user needs and preferences; • food product profiles; • standard operating procedures to assess quality traits; • a set of low, medium and high-throughput phenotyping protocols to measure and predicts quality traits. Both technical and equipment capacities were strengthened in this field; • harmonized tools and databases to collect and store data related to quality traits. Interviews and documentary analysis confirm these trends in terms of enhancement and introduction of these practices. For instance, biophysical and biochemical analyses (i.e. texture, color, water absorption capacity, sensory characteristics) are now used beyond the development and testing phase by a great majority of food labs in RTBfoods partner organizations. Key recommandations: 1. Consolidate and communicate results on low, medium and high throughput phenotyping methods and tools for quality traits 2. Prioritize and demonstrate o For the coming phase, prioritize, through multidisciplinary consultation, a limited number of SOPs for quality traits assessment which results have high probability to be integrated in breeding pipelines. o For the coming phase, identify a limited set of traits for which SOP and thresholds can be determined and validated. 3. Integrate and institutionalize o Build on the actual use of quality-related data to develop procedures and standards in relation with stage-gate approach and adapted to different organizational models.

Devaux Agathe, Proietti Claudio, Fauvelle Eglantine. 2023. Outcome evaluation of the RTBfoods project. Management team, WP6. Paris: RTBfoods Project-CIRAD, 48 p.https://doi.org/10.18167/agritrop/00748