Adoption Level of SAWAJ Trichoderma among Farmers of Surendranagar District in Gujarat State

Trichoderma harzianum is a saprophytic fungus which is used as a biological control agent against a wide range of economically important aerial and soil borne plant pathogens.Trichoderma harzianum is used for foliar application, seed treatment and soil treatment for suppression of various disease causing fungal pathogens. Junagadh Agricultural University has been engaged in production of Trichoderma harzianum in the brand name “SAWAJ Trichoderma” and made it available to farming community since year 2005-06. Since then its production and selling increased manyfold. So becomes essential to know the respondent’s level of adoption of SAWAJ Trichoderma among its end users i.e. farmers. Total 100 respondents were selected for the study purpose from five talukas of district who have used SAWAJ brand Trichoderma.Keeping this in mind, this study was carried out with the following objectives. To study the socio-economic profile of respondents. To determine the level of adoption of SAWAJ Trichoderma. Findings of this study show that majority of respondents belonged to middle age group (55%) and educated upto primary education (34%), had medium size of land holding (49%) and most of them had social participation (61%) and had actively participated in extension programmes (94%). Majority of respondents (39%) had their annual income ranging from Rs.100000 to 150000. 68 per cent respondents preferred adopt innovation after seeing it successful adoption by others. Majority of respondents had used it in crops like groundnut and cumin crop. Majority of respondents had partially adopted the SAWAJ Trichoderma and had positive perception about the use of SAWAJ Trichoderma. Most of them opined that application of Trichoderma is benefitted where a fungal disease appears every year and SAWAJ Trichoderma can be mix with FYM. Majority of respondents (69%) were using Trichoderma since last one year. 63 per cent respondents opined that they will continue the use of SAWAJ Trichoderma for their farm field.