| dc.description.abstract | The study's main objective was to evaluate the adoption of biofortified bean varieties in Sheema
and Ntungamo Districts, Southwestern Uganda. It was limited to identifying the social and
economic factors that affect the adoption of biofortified bean varieties, determining how farmers
perceive the chosen traits of biofortified bean varieties, and determining how effective the
interventions in place have been at encouraging farmers to adopt biofortified bean varieties. 214
respondents provided primary data for the study, which used a cross-sectional, descriptive research
approach. 193 were bean farmers randomly selected and 21 key informants were purposively
selected. The study findings established the following social economic factors significantly
affected the adoption of biofortified bean varieties; access to credit P=0.00 and SD= 0.00, market
access P=0.00 and SD=0.02892, household size P=0.00 and SD= 0.14047, access to extension
P=0.00 and SD= 0.19475, gender P=0.00 and SD= 0.30575, education level p=00 and
SD=0.31439, farmers perception P=0.00 and SD=0.34305, farm size P=0.00 and SD=0.34837,
farmers income P=0.39167 and farmers age was not significant since P=0.997 was greater than
P=0.05hence such factors which are significant should be put into consideration in design of any
related project or programme so that malnutrition is minimized using these biofortified bean
varieties. The study findings established that farmers liked NAROBEAN 2 109 (51%) and
NAROBEAN 3 62 (29%) due to their traits especially market class, early maturing, high with
cubiod shape, yielding, and bush type and short cooking time, market class respectively. The study
established that most farmers 175 (81.8%) were still growing local bean varieties since they
perceived biofortified bean varieties to require additional inputs especially fertilizers and
pesticides and these forced even those growing to abandon them. The study further established
that a reasonable number of farmers 87 (40.7%) have ever grown biofortified bean varieties but
only 39 (18.2%) were still growing them since the nutritional programme that used to provide
seeds to them was no longer supplying and even such biofortified bean varieties were not available
in the visited stores. It was established that creation of markets like promotion of school feeding
programme significantly influences adoption of boifortified bean varieties P=0.00 on the other
hand construction of storage facilities P=0.253, provision of post-harvest inputs like tarpaulins
P=0.709 and strengthening farmer groups P=0.931 did not significantly influence the adoption of
biofortified bean varieties. However the level of benefiting from the interventions is still low with
the highest 17% benefiting from free distribution of quality seeds and the least (2%) benefiting
from strengthening farmer groups. The study recommends that all the social economic factors
established in this study should be put into consideration while designing any project related to
minimization of malnutrition, the need to include farmers’ preferences and empowering farmers
to select new varieties under their own management and social economic conditions through
interventions like free distribution of biofortified bean seeds, construction of storage structures
accessible by farmers. | en_US |
