Context Breeding root, tuber, and banana (RTB) products to meet end-user preferences is a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation investment. This RTBfoods project reveals user preferences along the RTBfood chains in Benin, Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Nigeria, and Uganda. It has developed specific trait- determination methods for 13 RTB product profiles, derived from five key staple crops: banana/plantain, cassava, potato, sweetpotato and yam. This includes developing high-throughput tools to facilitate selecting new RTB varieties to meet end-users' requirements, thereby contributing to boosting variety adoption and ultimately food and nutrition security. Content Five work packages (WPs) bring together skills and expertise of several world-class laboratories. A sixth WP is dedicated to project management, financial and scientific coordination, monitoring, and promoting project achievements. The project has identified the quality traits that drive users' adoption of new RTB varieties, and taken a novel approach by directly involving consumers, processors, social scientists, breeders, and other researchers. The project is now translating 13 RTB product profiles into market-led breeding initiatives that have begun developing new, end-user–focused, RTB varieties in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The project is improving genetic insights into quality traits along the RTBfoods value chains, essential for successful RTB breeding and variety adoption, and reducing drudgery for women. Multidisciplinary teams of social scientists and food technologists have captured these essential quality traits through surveys of RTB crop processors and consumers, farmers, merchants, and traders. A highly positive project outcome assessment recommends consolidating and scaling the innovative, participatory RTB breeding approaches for the next phase. Advisory committee recommendations provide the basis for phase 2 project design. Objectives: The work will boost RTB improved variety adoption in SSA, and as