A SCOPING REVIEW /SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW OF THE LEGUME VALUE-CHAIN INNOVATIONS AND GAPS IN MALAWI

This protocol describes the objectives, the data collection, screening and analysis procedures and methods for a systematic literature review we will conduct for the legume value chain innovation and gaps in Malawi. This systematic review will screen and collect peer-reviewed papers and grey literature to identify the existing innovations and technologies that have been developed and disseminated to help producers and different actors within the legume value chains, particularly the soybean and groundnuts value chains. As the uncertainty around the tobacco market increase due to the anti-smoking lobby led by the World Health Organization (WHO), legumes including soybeans, groundnuts and pigeon peas are commercially viable crops with potential to replace tobacco in most tobacco-reliant economies like Malawi. As such, exploring and investing in technologies and innovations that could help enhance growth in the legume value chains is a plausible strategy for such economies. The Borlaug Higher Education for Agricultural Research and Development (BHEARD), a program under the United States government’s Feed the Future initiative is working to strengthen and build capacity of higher education institutions in its partner countries including Malawi. The goal of the initiative is to support development and commercialization of innovative ideas to transform the agricultural sector. In Malawi, the BHEARD is working with the Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (LUANAR) and the Malawi University of Science and Technology (MUST) to implement an innovation challenge to facilitate the development of demand driven solutions to real world challenges. Specifically, the program in collaboration with the universities is work on creating Agribusiness Innovation or incubation centre/hubs (i.e. AgribizHub1 at LUANAR and Innovation Garage at MUST) that are aimed at providing cocreation space to nurture innovative ideas that can create worth for communities and the economy. The main purpose of innovation hubs like Agribiz hub at LUANAR and Innovation Garage at MUST is to provide an entrepreneurial climate, commercialize technologies, enhance employment, and innovations. This systematic literature review, therefore, intends to provide evidence of the current innovation situation in the country by identifying the range of existing (or lacking) technologies and innovations relevant for the groundnuts and soybeans value chains for farmers, aggregators; packers; operators of driers, threshers, chippers etc.; transporters; processors; traders; and other service providers. Our research has two main objectives: First, we will identify the existing technologies and innovations that have been developed and/or disseminated to help processes within the targeted value chains. These technologies or innovations will be then categorized based on the stages of the value chain they are involved in including inputs, production, harvesting, transport, drying, shelling, threshing, storing or processing. Second, we will also identify innovation gaps for the two value chains in the literature and document evidence to help the current and future planning and commissioning of innovation research, development and interventions. A citable peer-reviewed paper and an innovation database will be developed based on the findings. These will also enable governments, development partners, investors, researchers and trainers to understand the current situation of legume innovations and technologies (i.e. both existing innovations and gaps) and this will help to guide future research and investment in legume innovations and technologies in the country. This protocol describes our objectives, definitions, research question, eligibility criteria, information sources, search strategy, data management and data extraction. It builds on a number of existing systematic review, guidelines and tools to help increase rigour, methodological transparency, complete reporting and uptake of research findings. These include: the PRISMA reporting standards (PRISMA-P-checklist.pdf,.) developed originally for medical systematic reviews, the ROSES guidelines and protocol reporting standards (Haddaway et al., 2018); which were developed to better reflect the nuances, heterogeneity and inter-disciplinarity across the conservation and environmental fields and for systematic mapping review outputs; and PRISMA-ScR, a checklist and explanation of an extension of PRISMA for scoping reviews and evidence maps (Tricco et al., 2018), and a scoping review guidance document and framework (Peters et al., 2017). Our protocol has been developed in advance of the review to develop, explain and guide our search and screening process. Any amendments to this protocol will be documented for transparency.