Site selection is underway as the Roots, Tubers and Bananas (RTB) Postharvest Processing project on adding value under the RTB research program gets started. Entitled “Driving livelihood improvements through demand-oriented interventions for competitive production and processing of RTBs,” CIAT-Asia’s focus will be on improving livestock feeding with residues and wastes at small and medium-scale cassava processing enterprises in northern Viet Nam and eastern Cambodia.
“We are now in the process of identifying processors in those areas and selecting sites,” said CIAT Asia’s Keith Fahrney, who has been busy visiting starch extraction equipment makers and small-scale wet starch processors in Viet Nam, accompanied to Duong Lieu Commune, Hoai Duc District in November by CIAT’s Dominique Dufour, and Thierry Tran of CIRAD.
In addition to crop management research with partners in areas supplying processing enterprises, the project will also provide support to hire a cassava breeder in Asia in 2014 together with equipment for the molecular breeding lab at the Agricultural Genetics Institute (AGI) in Hanoi.
