Paddy Growers Profile, Knowledge and Adoption of Plant Protection Measures

The study was conducted in the randomly selected villages of Talukas of Raichur district during 2009-2010. Manvi and Sindhanur Talukas were purposively selected since these Talukas were having more number of paddy growers and occupied more area under paddy cultivation as compared to the other Talukas in the district and also based on the criteria of high diseases and pest infestation level. Majority of the farmers (88.57% and 62.85%) had knowledge about brown plant hoppers and ear head cutting caterpillar. Majority (77.14%) of the farmers knew about Phorate. About 46.85 per cent of the farmers adopted Furadan pesticide for control of stem borer. Only 17.14 and 21.71 per cent of them adopted proper concentration of Carbofuran and Dimethoate, whereas 58.28 per cent of the farmers had adopted proper concentration of Endosulfan 35 EC. High majority (96%) of the respondents possessed television sets. Vehicles and sprayers and dusters were possessed by 90.85 and 89.71 per cent of the respondents, respectively. Lack of knowledge about chemicals, lack of knowledge about to number of sprays and lack of knowledge with regard to technology application were the major constraints as expressed by 43.42, 62.85 and 83.42 per cent of respondents, respectively. High cost of chemicals and high cost of equipments were also the major constraints expressed by 76.00 and 51.42 per cent of respondents.