A study on status of drum seeder technology in rice among the farmers of Nalgonda district Telangana state

Introduction

Rice is the major staple food more than half of the global population. It is the dominant crop of the country as it is grown in almost all the states of the country. In Telangana rice is the major food crop grown in an area of 25.75 lakh ha with production of 93.44 lakh tonnes and an average productivity of 3630 kg ha -1 (Upag, DA&FW, 2024) Rice is the predominant monocropped occupying the major area in Nalgonda District of Telangana State. Nalgonda district, Majority of the farmers follow conventional method of cultivating rice i.e., manual transplanting of rice under tanks and canals as source of irrigation. receipt of water under canals and tanks is seen in the second week of August or much later due to on set of monsoon, as a result farmers face water shortage, delayed and limited release of irrigation water from canals is observed. Most of the farmers take up nurseries from June last week in anticipation of rain water and as rains are delayed over-aged seedlings are transplanted due to late release of canal water, on receipt of water and there is high demand for labour during transplantings and other agricultural operations. The rice farmers practicing transplanting are facing problem of shortage of labour during peak time, high labour charges, small and fragmented land holdings, lack of technical knowledge, nonavailability of sufficient water and other inputs. To tackle all these problems direct seeding of rice has been found most appropriate alternative to manual transplanting. It not only avoids seedbed preparation, nursery raising and transplanting but also gives better yield than existing manual transplanting. To address these issues and to provide an alternate option to traditional system of rice cultivation, the Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Kampasagar demonstrated drum seeder technology in rice by conducting different extension activities viz., on-farm trials, Frontline demonstrations, Training programmes, Method demonstrations, Result demonstrations, Field days and Exposure visits etc in the Nalgonda district since 2018.

Methodology

Ex-post facto research design was selected for present study. The study was conducted in Nalgonda district of Telangana state. It was purposively selected as it is one of the major rice producing districts of Telangana state. There are thirty one mandals in Nalgonda district, among these four mandals were purposively selected, from each mandal three villages were selected based on the area under Drum seeder technology i.e., a total of twelve villages were selected. From each selected village, 10 farmers were selected randomly, thus a total of 120 beneficiaries practicing drum seeder technology were selected for the study. The data from the respondents was collected with the help of www.extensionjournal.com structured schedules and personal interviews. The collected data was analyzed and statistical technique frequency, percentage were used. The Primary data was collected from the farmers through personal interview with the help of well-prepared pre-tested schedules and questionnaire. The results revealed that majority of the respondents were middle aged (54.00%), intermediate school education (28.00%), most of the farmers are small farmers having less than 2.5 ha of land (63.00%), medium farming experience (62.00%), high training undergone (61.00%), high extension contact (74.00%), medium mass media exposure (68.00%), information seeking behavior (55.00%) and risk orientation (54.00%) (Table 1). Finally, it can be concluded that majority of the respondents (85.16%) had favorable perception towards rice drum seeder technology and 19.56 percent had unfavorable perception where as 15.28 percent were undecided. These findings were in line with results of Nirmala (2012) [6] . From table 03, it was observed that, majority of the respondents (59.16%) had high level of knowledge followed by medium (32.5%) and low (8.33%) (Ganesan and Seethalakshmi 2002) [2] . The reasons for this result might be due to good educational status, high extension contact, high training undergone, and medium information seeking behavior, medium mass media exposure and medium risk orientation. Due to good education levels majority of them were able to gather the information and read information bulletin related to rice drum seeder technology. The agricultural department and extension agencies conduct training programmes, demonstrations, make farmers to visit and interact with progressive farmer's fields and inspire them to have more extension contact and social participation. So farmers will improve their knowledge about recommended package of practices and thus obtained high level of knowledge regarding rice drum seeder technology. The results were in conformation with Thiyagarajan (2011) [9] . www.extensionjournal.com From table 5 it can be inferred that, majority if the farmers have (51.67%) high level of adoption followed by medium (35.00%) and low (13.33%) Thiyagarajan (2011) [9] . The reasons for high level of adoption is due to good educational status, high extension contact, high training undergone, and medium information seeking behavior, medium mass media exposure and medium risk orientation. It indicates that most of the farmers adopted the whole package of practices of the drum seeder technology as per the recommendations of the scientists of KVK and Department of agriculture. High rate of adoption is with reference to the component practices of the technology adopted by the farmers and low rates of adoption referrers to the partial adoption of the technology. It also reveals that FLDs, training programmes, field days etc organized by KVK helped in gaining the required knowledge on the technology and thus increased the adoption rate among the farmers. (Chinnam Naidu et al., 2018) [1] . Major problems expressed by the farmers viz., Weed Management (81.7%) farmers expressed that weed management is the major problem and timely management is required for obtaining good yields, farmers feel difficulty in operating cono weeder (74.2%), difficulty in running the drum seeder in saline soils (68.3%), uneven leveling may leads to poor crop growth (65.0%) respectively were the major constrains faced by the farmers in adoption of drum seeding technology in rice (Table 8).

Results and Discussion

Conclusion

It can be concluded from these findings, farmers has high level of knowledge and adoption of recommended practices under rice drum seeder technology in Nalgonda district. Farmers accepted this technology as seeing is believing. It involves less cost of cultivation than traditional method. Mainly it reduces labour during peak periods i.e. transplanting time. It is technically viable and economically feasible that could be adopted by even small and marginal farmers also. KVK extension activities played very important role in popularization of the technology, which includes training, demonstrations, field days in farmer field.

References

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