Adoption Behaviour and Constraints Faced by Farmers Regarding Recommended Plant Protection Practices in Pigeon Pea in Khunti District of Jharkhand

Plant protection practices is an important aspect to get healthy plant, healthy seed and maximum crop yield. Less knowledge and adoption of recommended plant protection practices is one of the important reasons for low yield of the crop. Hence, the study was undertaken to determine the level of adoption of the recommended plant protection practices that would help farmers to increase the yield. The study was conducted in Khunti district of Jharkhand. A total of 120 respondents were selected randomly from six villages (two each) under three blocks namely, Khunti, Torpa and Arki because area had less productivity than production. The data were collected by interviewing respondents with the help of pre-structured interview schedule and appropriate statistical analysis was done. Descriptive research design was used for the study. The study revealed that majority of respondents (57.5%) belong to middle age group, 71.70% of the respondents were marginal farmers with less than one hectare land as they had fragmented lands, majority of the respondents (56.7%) had low annual income and majority of the respondents mainly interacted with each other on a personal level. The findings also revealed that majority of respondents (46.67%) had low level of adoption towards recommended plant protection practices followed by 35.83 % and 17.5 % medium and high level, respectively. Age, occupation, family size, land holding, annual income, material possession, extension contact and rate of utilization of sources were positive and significantly correlated towards adoption level of the plant protection practices. The study also enlightened the major constraints faced by the farmers of the study area. Some of the major constraints were lack of trainings of scientific cultivation, poor extension contacts, high cost of insecticides and pesticides, unavailability of information and lack of good quality insecticides and pesticides.