The Commercialisation of Biofortified Crops (CBC) Programme was launched in 2019 to address widespread hidden hunger in Africa and Asia by significantly expanding the reach of foods and food products made with biofortified staple crops. The CBC Programme is led by GAIN and HarvestPlus who share an ambition to expand coverage of biofortified nutrient dense foods to at least 190 million consumers by 2022. The focus will be on biofortified varieties of six highly promising crops, developed by HarvestPlus and its partners. These crops form the frontline cluster of sentinel nutritious staple crops to be considered for commercialisation at scale by the partnership. They include iron-enriched beans and pearl millet, zinc-enriched wheat and rice; and vitamin A-enriched cassava and maize.
In line with a programme impact pathway and logical framework, GAIN and HarvestPlus identified and refined a series of indicators that will be tracked to monitor the process and outputs of commercialisation as well as to estimate reach and potential for impact of biofortification among target populations, which are outlined in this monitoring reference manual. Each country will use this manual as a guide to develop their own monitoring and evaluation plans with the specific details and indicators related to their country-crop programme. Over the course of the programme, data will be collected as part of routine monitoring to measure progress and facilitate corrective actions where needed throughout the course of the programme implementation.