58 GERMINATION.CA JULY 2017 WORLD STATUS approaches and facilitate a dialogue between motivated scientists. So then, what do breeders want from gender research and why are donors willing to fund it? The answer is clear: adop- tion and impact. The details of interdisciplinary project imple- mentation, however, are more complicated.  Scientists from different disciplines, from the natural to social sciences, clearly recog- nized the need for, and value of, interdisciplinary work, teams, and the vital role of social science in scaling up the impact of breeding programs. However, as is most often AFRICA WHY IS IT that in Malawi, Africa, the three improved varieties of pigeon pea — which were developed with supposed market-desired traits — received zero levels of adoption, while at the same time, the local Nthawajuni variety spread throughout the country, dominating 80 per cent of the planted area? In Malawi, pigeon pea production, harvest, preparation and sale are all activities that are important to and carried out by women. While these varieties may have been selected with market-desired traits, breeders did not fully appreciate the gendered preferences of their end-users, nor fully understand how they drive adoption and use. Today, a renewed focus on gender, fuelled by donors, has increased the research community’s awareness and appreciation of the diversity of end-users. Many plant and animal breeders have not just come to recognize the importance of end-users’ prefer- ences, but also the diversity of those preferences, which arise from their socioeconomic and cultural contexts. This shared understanding of the importance of consid- ering end-user preferences was a major topic of discus- sion at a gender, breeding and genomics workshop led by the CGIAR Gender and Agriculture Research Network recently held in Nairobi. While there has been a long history of scientists realizing the impor- tance of end-user preferences, for CGIAR, this presented an opportunity to revisit its Global researchers are using social science, big data and biofortification to attain better yields and better health for people around the world. Handsome Chipeta, ICRISAT technician, describes the benefits of ICEAP-000557, the first medium-duration pigeonpea variety released in Malawi. Photo: Swathi Sridharan (ICRISAT)