Farmers can only be market oriented if his/her production plan follows market signals and produce commodities that is more marketable. In other to achieve it, this study provided empirical evidence on the gender analyses of market orientation in South-East, Nigeria. A stratified sampling design was used to select 360 sample respondents in 2017. Market Orientation Index (MOI) and Heckit selectivity model were used to estimate the level of market orientation and determinants of market orientation respectively. The results show a mean market orientation score (0.17 and 0.59) for the male and female sweet potato farmers respectively, indicating low level of market orientation especially for the male farmers. The coefficients for age, educational level, capital, area cultivated with sweet potato, farming experience, marketing experience, native of community, and road conditions were positive and household size negative and significantly related to market orientation for female farmers. Coefficients for age, household size, level of education, transportation cost, native of community, and marketing experience were positive and distance from farm to the market was negative and significantly related with market orientation for the male farmers. The coefficients for gender were negative and significant at 5% and 1% for probability of being market oriented and level of market orientation respectively, indicating that the female farmers were more likely to be market oriented compared to their male counterparts. The study therefore calls for policies on promoting farmers access to land (particularly the female farmers), availability and the use of quality planting seed and establishment of formal sweet potato market. Manuscript profile

The study analyzed gender differences in market participation among small holder sweetpotato farmers in South East Nigeria.A stratified random sampling was used to select 360 respondents (180 male and 180 female) for the studyin 2016.Market participation Index (MPI) and logit model wereused to estimate the level of participation and decision to participate in the sweetpotato market by gender respectively.The results showed that the females farmers tend to participate more in the market more than their male counterparts. The coefficients for age and distance from farm to market were negative, education and market orientation were positive and significantly related with decision to participate in the market for both male and female farmers.The coefficient for household size was positive and transportation cost negative and significant at 5% and 1% level respectively for the male farmers, while area of sweetpotato cultivated and marketing experience were positive and significant for the female farmers at 10% and 5% respectively. The coefficient for gender had a negative sign indicating that female farmers are more likely to participate in the sweetpotato market compared to the male farmers. The results call for policies aimed at investment in rural education, access to land (especially to female farmers) and provision of enabling environment through continuous rural training and provision of incentives like credit and inputs to encourage and attract young male and female farmers to remain in sweetpotato production. Manuscript profile