C oronavirus disease (COVID-19) is caused by a recently discovered coronavirus, an infectious disease (Ortiz et al., 2020). Most people who become ill with COVID-19 will experience symptoms that are mild to moderate and will recover without special treatment (Barati et al., 2020). The virus that causes Abstract | Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), an infectious disease made Malaysia implemented a Movement Control Order (MCO) as a preventive measure towards the spread of the virus. Malaysia's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in agriculture sector (2020) is 7.4 per cent, the percentage growth of this sector declined 2.2 per cent from 2.0 per cent in the previous year. The declination of the growth may be related with performance of extension agent during the pandemic due to 1 st MCO regulations. In addition, the performance before MCO was high in 2019, hence, the aim of this study is to determine the skills and work performance of extension agents in their Program Development Skills (planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating -PIME). Specifically, this research intended to determine the level of PIME skills and their work performance, to evaluate the relationship of PIME skills with the work performance of extension agent and to determine the most PIME skills that contributes to the work performance of the extension agent during MCO in Peninsular Malaysia. This study was driven by the Iceberg Model and distributed using a random sampling technique. A total of 362 extension agents from Peninsular Malaysia were participated in this research. Based on the result, all independent variables (PIME skills) indicated a positive correlation towards work performance. The monitoring and evaluating are the skills that significant towards work performance, and the evaluating skill became the highest independent variable that contributes to the work performance of extension agent. About 71.2% variance of work performance is explained by PIME and the balance 28.8% is explained by the other factors. This study suggest that the extension agent should improve their planning and implementing skills to suite with pandemic situation, so that the program that has been planned earlier can be done even though the situation might be challenging.

was found in Wuhan, China in October 2019 where the disease was expected from wildlife and started to spread in other regions including Malaysia. The first case Covid-19 in Malaysia was found in February 2020 when it was detected by tourists who came back from China. On 18 th March 2020, Malaysia's government announced the Movement Control Order (MCO), in which all of the sectors were interrupted including the agriculture sector. Thus, extension agents need to come out with a solution to help farmers and entrepreneurs during this hard time, to transfer the information, and increase their confidence and knowledge in agriculture during this pandemic. Therefore, this research is aiming to determine the relationship between Program Development Skills; Planning, Implementing, Monitoring and Evaluation towards their readiness to face the pandemic of Covid-19. From the results, monitoring and evaluating skills significantly contributed towards the readiness of extension agents. These two skills explained about 68.7% of the variance in the readiness of the extension agent to face challenges. Therefore, from this study most of the extension agents were ready to prepare or altered their program development skills based on the pandemic outbreak situation. The research would be important as an indicator of the readiness of extension agents and whether they are well prepared for the adjustment during the postpandemic.