Self -reported knowledge and understanding of added sugars by consumers in Ghana.

The consumption of added sugars has been a major concern among consumers and researchers around the world. Some of these added sugars pose health threats such as obesity, and liver diseases to consumers. Therefore, consumers' understanding and knowledge of added sugars is important in regulating the intake of food items that contain different types and levels of added sugar. In this study, the knowledge and understanding of staff (consumers) of the University of Energy and Natural Resources, Ghana, was assessed through survey The results showed that about 38.5 % of consumers always read food labels whereas 3.1 % never read the labels of food they purchased. However, only about 20 % of consumers considered added sugars as most important information on food labels while most (about 38 %) were concerned about the calorie level in food items purchased. Based on the consumer's knowledge of sugars and sweeteners, there was a high level of disparity in classifying sugars in food as sugars and sweeteners. In addition, most consumers reported that they would adversely avoid food items containing lactose, isoglucose, and saccharin. The awareness of the consumers to the WHO recommendation for sugar reduction, the gender (P = 0.278), age (P = 0.959), level of education (P = 0.888), and staff category (P = 0.944) did not influence their decisions on purchasing food items with added sugars Most consumers were interested in issues of food and nutrition. Therefore, it is recommended that staff are taken through aspects of food nutrition as well as the consumption of added sugar towards the recommended levels.

CCMT: Dataset for crop pest and disease detection.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been evident in the agricultural sector recently. The objective of AI in agriculture is to control crop pests/diseases, reduce cost, and improve crop yield. In developing countries, the agriculture sector faces numerous challenges in the form of knowledge gap between farmers and technology, disease and pest infestation, lack of storage facilities, among others. In order to resolve some of these challenges, this paper presents crop pests/disease datasets sourced from local farms in Ghana. The dataset is presented in two folds; the raw images which consists of 24,881 images (6,549-Cashew, 7,508-Cassava, 5,389-Maize, and 5,435-Tomato) and augmented images which is further split into train and test sets. The latter consists of 102,976 images (25,811-Cashew, 26,330-Cassava, 23,657-Maize, and 27,178-Tomato), categorized into 22 classes. All images are de-identified, validated by expert plant virologists, and freely available for use by the research community.

Genetic variability, heritability and association among yield components and proximate composition of neglected and underutilized Bambara groundnut [Vigna subterranea (L) Verdc] accessions for varietal development in Ghana.

Bambara groundnut is an underutilized crop in Ghana with a lot of potential that can be harnessed to contribute to food and nutritional security in Ghana and Sub-Saharan African countries. The recent experiment was conducted to assess the genetic variability, heritability, and association among the yield components and the proximate composition of the Bambara groundnuts. Twenty-five (25) accessions of Bambara groundnut were sourced from different agro-ecological zones. The results from the analysis of variance showed a highly significant difference (p < 0.001) among almost all the traits studied. The estimate of the broad-sense heritability ranged from 12.50% to 84.458% for seed width and economic yield respectively. High heritability values accompanied by high GA were recorded for hundred seed weight (g), economic yield (g), biological yield (g), harvest index, and yield (kg). The separation of correlation coefficients into direct and indirect effects of component traits for yield traits revealed that traits such as economic yield and pod weight which were positively correlated with yield and exerted a high positive direct effect on yield could be selected for varietal development of Bambara groundnut in Ghana. The results from the proximate composition suggest that the Bambara groundnut accessions used in this study have high nutritional potentials that could serve in the alleviation of food security and nutritional problems when these accessions are selected for varietal development.