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Coconut is one of the most important crops under rainfed conditions in marginal soil of Chitradurga districts. Majority of the coconut growers in the district were facing the problem of theft of fallen nuts and shortage of skilled labor for nut harvesting. The traditional method of harvesting the nuts using knife with bamboo sticks for dwarf trees and climbing the tall trees was quite risky and accident prone. To overcome this problem, ICAR-Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Chitradurga conducted training programmes to unemployed rural farm youths in collaboration with Coconut Development Board, Cochin. Total 80 farm youths were trained during 2012-13. With the conventional coconut climbing, a person could harvest about 8-25 nuts/ tree while climbing the tree one had experienced body pain, muscles catch and lot of life risk with meager earnings of Rs.5,000-15,000/-year. After using the Coconut tree climber, annual income increased to Rs.20,000-60,000/-year and a person could climb more than 80-100 feet tall coconut tree without any life risk and harvesting efficiency increased to tune of 20-50 nuts/tree. This was encouraged many youths from surrounding villages to approach KVK to undergo training and choose coconut harvesting as an employment generation opportunity to meet their livelihood demand. Simultaneously, farmers were also benefitted by harvesting the nuts at right time and getting quality nuts also good price in the market.

A field study was carried out at Main Agricultural Research Station (MARS), Dharwad during kharif 2010-11 and 2011-12 to study the effect of organic manures and micronutrients on cotton. The results of the two years pooled data revealed that, application of enriched compost (EC) (1/3) + vermicompost (VC) (1/3) + gliricidia leaf manure (GLM) (1/3) equivalent to recommended dose of fertilizer (5 tonnes/ha FYM) recorded significantly higher kapas yield (1 944 kg/ha) and mean boll weight (4.57 g) over EC (1/3) + VC (1/3) + GLM (1/3) equivalent to recommended dose of nitrogen. Foliar spray of panchagavya @ 5% recorded significantly higher kapas yield (2 038 kg/ha) and mean boll weight (4.76 g) over foliar spray of bio-digester @ 20% (1 874 kg/ha). Among the organic treatment combinations, combined application of EC (1/3) + VC (1/3) + GLM (1/3) equivalent to RDF with foliar spray of panchagavya @ 5% recorded significantly higher kapas yield (1 999 kg/ha) and mean boll weight (4.70 g) over other organic combinations. Application of EC (1/3) + VC (1/3) + GLM (1/3) equivalent to RDF recorded significantly higher gross returns, net returns and B:C ratio (Rupees 110380, 77335/ha and 3.34, respectively) over other manurial treatments. The foliar spray of panchagavya @ 5% recorded significantly higher gross returns, net returns and B:C ratio (Rupees 108542, 76048 ha and 3.34, respectively) over foliar spray of bio-digester @ 20%. Among the treatment combinations, combined application of EC (1/3) + VC (1/3) + GLM (1/3) equivalent to RDF with foliar spray of panchagavya @ 5% recorded significantly higher gross returns, net returns and B:C ratio (Rupees 113574, 80199/ha and 3.40, respectively) over EC (1/3) + VC (1/3) + GLM (1/3) equivalent to RDN with foliar spray of bio-digester @ 20%. Higher yield, yield parameters and economics can be obtained in cotton with combined application of EC (1/3) + VC (1/3) + GLM (1/3) equivalent to RDF with foliar spray of panchagavya @ 5%.

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