Abstract :
Potato is an important vegetable crop of the Sabarkantha district of the Gujarat state occupying about 18.46 per cent of total potato cropped area of the state. It ranks second in area and production of potato after Banaskantha district. While it ranks fourth with average productivity 31.04 MT/ha after Gandhinagar (33.75 MT/ha), Anand (32.00 MT/ha) and Banaskantha (31.05 MT/ha).The following objectives were studied that are to find out the extent of adoption of potato production technology by the potato growers and to know the marketing management by the potato growers, to ascertain the association between the extent of adoption of recommended potato production technology by the potato growers and their selected characteristics.The following conclusions were, A great majority (61.67%) of the potato growers had medium level of knowledge regarding recommended practices of potato. The findings regards to the practice-wise knowledge of the respondents about recommended potato production technology are presented. It reveals that ‘sowing time and method’ and ‘irrigation management’ were the most important practices of potato cultivation and found having maximum mean knowledge score (93.33 mean score each).Majority (70.83 %) of the respondents had medium extent of adoption of recommended production technology of potato. The practice-wise adoptions of recommended production technology of potato concluded that among the different recommended potato production technologies, (86.57mean score) of the respondents had adopted irrigation management technology.Majority (70.83%) of the respondents had medium marketing management by the farmers. The data about various aspect of marketing management concluded that it was portray that majority respondent (48.33%) were selling their produce through the commission agent, while 30.83 per cent of the respondents selling their produced to the wholesaler in the market yard. Further, it was found that 51.66 per cent of the respondents sold their produce when the prices are favorable, while 30.83 per cent of the respondents sold their produce immediately after the harvest. In case of grading it was found that 60.00 per cent of the respondents followed grading on the basis of the size of potato and 40.00 per cent of the respondents followed grading on the basis of quality of potato. The responses regarding storage facility revealed that 43.33 per cent of the respondents stored the potato in gunny bags, followed cold storage 40.84 per cent. The independent variables like age, education, annual income, extension participation, method of irrigation, innovative proneness, risk orientation and level of knowledge had positive and significant correlation with adoption of recommended crop production technology by farmers. While, the variables like size of family, social participation, land holding and cropping pattern had positive and non- significant relationship with adoption of recommended crop production technology by the farmers.
Keyword :
Adoption, Production technology, Potato growers