Working Session by the Mauritius Breadfruit Sector Consortium

28th March 2012. The Mauritius Breadfruit Sector Consortium organized a working session on the 28th March 2012 at the Food and Agricultural Research Council (FARC), Reduit.

This working session was a follow-up to the Partnership Inception Workshop organised by the consortium on 9th and 10th February 2012 in the framework of the PAEPARD project.

The participants of the working session were comprised of representatives from the Agricultural Research and Extension Unit (AREU), the University of Mauritius (UoM), Conserverie Sarjua Ltee, the Ministry of Agro-Industry and Food Security, the Food and Agricultural Research Council and the APEXHOM (Professional Association of Producers / Exporters of Horticultural Products from Mauritius).

The objective of the working session was to use the questions generated from the last workshop as guidelines to identify research areas/ research themes along the value-chain, with potential for research and development in the local context (Mauritius).

Along the Breadfruit value-chain, 11 themes were identified (from its origin to marketing and consumer preferences), and there were unanswered questions that cropped up during the previous workshop. Participants were provided a copy of these questions which they could use as guidelines, and the floor was open for discussion on where we have areas of interest for Research and Development under each theme. Each research theme or research area that was proposed by the participants was discussed and added under their respective headings. After this exercise, a series of research and also development themes was generated (horizontally in picture below), which were then classified in 6 components (input supply, farm production, post harvest treatment, logistics, processing, marketing) of the value chain (vertically in picture).

By the end of the working session, 10 Research and Development themes were generated which would be used for the next workshop, whose objectives would be to formulate research questions under the identified themes and conceptualise & develop project proposals.