Farmer’S Knowledge On Insect Pests, Disease And Management Practices Of Maize Field In Gulmi District, Nepal

A survey research study on farmer knowledge on Insect, pests, diseases and management practices of Maize field was undertaken in Satyawati rural municipality of Gulmi district. The study aimed to identify the level of farmer knowledge on insect, pest, disease identification and management practices.90 respondents were selected through two-stage sampling procedure. The first stage was the purposive selection of five out of the eight wards at Local level (Satyawati). In second stage, there was selection of active and contributing farmers through simple random sampling method from each ward. A pretested semi-structured interview schedule was employed to collect data from the respondents. MS-Excel and Statistical Package of Social Sciences (SPSS) software were used for data entry and analysis. Data analysis showed that farmers grow both improved and local varieties, most of the farmer cultivate local variety (71.1%), followed by 21.1% Manakamana-3. The reason for preferring local variety was due to their betterment for consumption and easy availability. According to the data obtained from survey, only 1.1% of farmers could identify insects; 63.3% could identify only some insects, which includes fall armyworms and white grub in field. Many respondents said that fall armyworm with an index 0.99 was major insects observed in maize fields, followed by white grub with an index 0.58, stemborers with 0.54, cutworms with an index 0.37, aphids with an index 0.31. And In case of storage condition, it includes Maize weevil with index 0.95, Angoumois Grain moth with index 0.76, Red rust flour beetle with index 0.47, and Khapra beetle with index 0.31. Deficiency 65.7% was found to be major disease observed in maize field followed by Corn ear rot in maize field of study area. Most of the farmer do not have knowledge about disease and cannot identify them. Among the respondents, 15.6% didn’t practice management practices, and the major reason was found to be the due to lack of knowledge (87.8%). The major management practices followed by the respondent were chemical management practices, namely Emamectin benzoate (5.7% WDG) granted by the municipality against fall armyworm. It has been found that in order to manage storage pest and diseases Most of the farmer (73.3%) adopted only sun drying, while some (3.3%) adopted sun drying along with neem during storage, 2.2% of the farmers were found to use chemical like zinc phosphide for rodents. Thus, farmer led participatory research should take into considerations the farmers circumstances and preferences and develop maize varieties and provides extension services that meet farmer demands.