Extent of knowledge level of farmers about postharvest management practices and their use in pigeonpea

Abstract

SUMMARY :The study was conducted in Gulbarga district of NorthKarnataka during 2013-14 to know the knowledge level of farmers about post-harvest management in pigeonpea by selecting 120 farmers as respondents for the study. The data were elicited by administering interview method and analyzed using mean, standard deviation, frequency and percentage. The major findings of the study were majority (79.17%) of the respondents had medium to high level of knowledge about post-harvest management practices.Whereas cent per cent of pigeonpea growers had knowledge about harvesting by sickle, sun drying, cleaning by hand picking, house hold storage, transportation, Dal making and as animal feed. A large majority of the respondents had knowledge about baging in jute bag (97.50%), beating with sticks (91.66%), management of storage pest i.e., Bruchids (83.33%) and its management through Neem botanicals (80.83%) and godown storage of produce (80.00%). However, one third (64.17%) of the respondents belonged to middle age, of which 30.00per cent of them illiterates, while 72.50 per cent had bigfamily size 42.50% of them had medium annual income, 40.83 per cent of the respondents had semi-medium land holding (5.1-10 acres),more than half (55.83%) of the respondents belonged to medium farming experience but maximum number of them used to seek information from mass media, nearly half of the respondents (41.14%) had extension participation, half of the respondents belonged to medium achievement motivation, 38.33 per cent of the respondents belonged to medium economic motivation and 49.17per cent of them belonged to medium risk orientation category.