Significant progress in agricultural technology development have remained persistently blind to social and gender inequalities. Creating agricultural research ecosystems and institutions that address gender inequality require structural and systemic analysis. One of the major areas of investment in agricultural innovation is plant breeding.

Vietnamese food systems have experienced a transition process since the late 1980s Đổi mới reforms. This paper examines the historical and ongoing transitions of pork and vegetable networks, using the Multi-Level Perspective (MLP), the Multi-Pattern Approach (MPA) and insights from food systems research. Our findings show that there was a shift from collective and self-subsistent farming to commercial small-scale farming in the late 1980s, and a rapid institutionalisation of smallholders and wet markets in the early 1990s.