Ethnic Vegetable

"Seed System Analysis of Ethnic Vegetables" is a multi-dimensional research initiative. It involves the regulatory structures and regulations of the governments with the involvement of multiple stakeholders related to the trade of ECV and the collection, distribution, and marketing of its seeds. This research is closely connected to the food preferences, food security and nutrition and policy issues regarding ECV. The research project will have an interdisciplinary management team consisting specialists from agriculture, sociology, food and nutrition. Dr. Teelucksingh (principal investigator) is specialized in community-based research and social inequality and urban sustainability. Dr. Koc Mustafa(co-investigator) is a specialized in food security and rural sociology and immigration issues researcher Md Hannan is an agriculture extension specialist who has previous experiences of working with Dr. Glen Filson, Professor (retired), Capacity Development and Extension (CDE), School of Environmental Design and Rural Development, one of the specialists of ECV in Ontario. He has
experiences of working with Dr. Helen Hambly Odame regarding the cultivation of ECV in the community garden and produced a video documentary on the cultivation of ECV on Given-dale farms, Toronto. The project team also has food and nutrition specialist Dr. Jaqui Gingers. This research will involve a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods to allow for both descriptive and explanatory analysis. The literature review will inform the interview data collection. In-depth face-to-face interviews will be conducted with identified (a) key informants (KII) and (b) immigrant growers from the Bangladeshi community along with conducting a survey of seeding practices and systems using a structured survey questionnaire. The following tools and techniques will be used for collection of the information-
1.0 Content Analysis: The project will start with an analysis and review of the existing scholarly and policy literature regarding the cultivation of ethnic vegetables in Ontario and other relevant jurisdictions. It will also include the analysis of secondary data published by the City of Toronto, OMAFRA, and Agriculture and Agri-food Canada regarding the cultivation of ECV, seed and food policies and seed acts and regulations.
2.0 Key Informant Interview (KII): Five telephone/face to face interviews will be conducted to gain a detailed understanding of policy issues regarding the collection, distribution, and marketing of ethnic vegetable seeds and their Eco-friendly cultivation practices. A purposive selection sampling strategy will be used to select key informant interview participants from the City of Toronto, OMAFRA, seed stores, and ECV growers. The KIIs will be semi-formal and conducted through a per-established questionnaire. Respondents will be asked some open-ended questions to gain an in-depth understanding of the policy issues regarding the cultivation of ethnic vegetables and their seed sources. The information will be recorded on a keynote paper, which was used for open coding during the analysis. The respondents will be asked both open and closed ended questions.

3.0 Interview with Survey: Similarly, a face-to-face interview along with a survey will be used to collect information from the respondents (gardeners).The study will focus on the collection of information from the randomly selected Bangladeshi gardeners from 44 community gardens and one hundred ten allotment gardens across the GTA.
For the face to face interview, the respondents will be selected by selected from a listing of the City of Toronto. In this survey, the researcher will provide a structured survey questionnaire to the respondents followed by the interview to have the demographics and factual information. A total of 45 gardeners will be selected for the interview. However, the sample size could be varied due to some restrictions such as limited amount of time and the unavailability of stakeholders and natural calamities. The findings from this sample, therefore, will be generalized to the
population.
The information obtained from the interviews will be analyzed through open coding. The qualitative analytical software Nvivo will be used for the analysis of interview transcripts. Data collected from surveys will be analyzed through the quantitative software SPSS. Frequency counts, percentages, means and standard deviations, variance and ANOVA will also be extensively used for data analysis.
4.0 Analysis of Seed sample: There are multiple aspects associated with seed quality. It has many policy issues in seed trades (collection, distribution and marketing), seed treatment, plant protection, plant recognition, location specific cultivation practices, food and nutrition, environmental sustainability, and production issues. To test the quality and to determine the compatibility with the Canadian standard of A total of 50 Ethnic Vegetables (ECV) seed samples will be collected from various formal and informal sources throughout the Ontario. As the seed testing service has been privatized, an open quotation will be advertised by the project management team to get acceptable rates regarding the physical purity, pure seed, germination, and seed viability test. The results will be used to compare with the Canadian standard to determine further recommendation regarding policy reforms.