Applications of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) offer excellent possibilities for strengthening transfer of technology between research and extension systems and onward transmission to the end-users. The study aims at studying the perceived knowledge and attitude levels of fisheries extension professionals of Tripura on the usage of ICTs concerning their socio-personal characteristics and explores the associated challenges. Data were gathered by pre-tested semi-structured interview schedule from completely enumerated 81 extension professionals of the department of fisheries, posted in the three purposively selected districts of Tripura during April- August 2021. The majority of respondents belonged to the middle age group (61.73%) and had medium level knowledge (78.57%) and attitude (85.18%) towards the use of ICT tools. Age and designation were negatively correlated, whereas education was positively and significantly correlated with knowledge and attitude level of fisheries extension professionals on usage of ICT tools separately. The Directorate of Fisheries of the state should develop meticulous strategies for each level of fisheries extension professionals to address the main challenges related to the use of ICT tools revealed in the study, which may bring a paradigm shift in fisheries farm information communication.
The study was conducted in tribal areas of Garo Hills, Meghalaya during 2013 to evaluate the knowledge attitude and practices of different tribal farmer community towards scientific horticulture. A total of 150 tribal respondents, 30 each from Rabha, Hajong, Koch, Banai and Garo tribal area were selected randomly. The selected respondents were interviewed with the help of a semi structured interview schedule. It was found that majority (48%) of the respondents have primary level of education. 83.3 per cent of the farmers cultivate in their own land except Banai tribe where almost 50 per cent of the respondents cultivate on leased land. 70.7 per cent of the respondents have annual income between Rs. 30,000/-to Rs. 60,000/from main source. Eighty four per cent of the respondents have farming experience between 3-9 years and above 12 years. It was also revealed that 96 and 81.3 per cent of the respondents have land under vegetables cultivation and orchard is less than 0.4 ha, respectively. In the study area it was found that 49.3 per cent of the respondents have farming as primary occupation and majority (68%) of the respondents have poor level of knowledge and neutral attitude towards modern horticulture, respectively. It was also found that education, source of land and farming experience were negatively correlated with knowledge level which was mainly because with higher education, respondents loose interest in farming and their involvement in farming reduces and thus knowledge level in horticulture comes down. Results of the study revealed that knowledge, attitude and cultivation practices level were considerably low among almost all the tribes though it varied from one community to other living in a same geographical area.
The varied agro-climatic condition of Meghalaya favours cultivation of different horticultural crops, particularly different fruit crops, and pineapple is the most notable of them. The present study was conducted on 200 tribal pineapple growers of Meghalaya in the North Eastern Himalayan region of India in the year 2017-2018. The article highlighted the technological gap among pineapple growers with special emphasis on the differences in agro-economic, socio-psychological and extension-communication characteristics between the Khasi and the Garo tribes of Meghalaya in the north-eastern Himalayan region of India. The average level of the technological gap of Garo farmers (61.78%) was slightly higher than that of Khasi farmers (57.85%). The Mann-Whitney U test reported that the mean scores of the technological gap for the farmers of West Garo Hills and Ri Bhoi were indicating a significant difference in the technological gap between the farmers of these two tribes. The study suggested the need to understand the differential characteristics of these tribes and to introduce location-specific technologies to minimize the technological gap and increase pineapple production in these tribal areas.
Meghalaya is one of the major fish consuming states in India, but fish is in short supply in the state due to inadequate domestic production to match its growing demand. Farmers of north-eastern hilly region of India, particularly the Garo Hill farmers are very much in need of scientific information on fish farming techniques, capacity building and training for sustainable fish farming in the area. The present study attempted to develop a mobile-based fishery advisory prototype in Garo Hills of Meghalaya as an alternate method of fishery extension to deliver right information at right time for Garo tribal farmers. Two thousand farmers from 65 villages (1000 farmers each from West Garo Hills District and South West Garo Hills District) were registered in Interactive Voice Response System(IVRS) with their farm details and mobile numbers. The major features of the system were to deliver the farm advisories (Pull Based) and information services (Push Based) using the software platform ‘Interactive Information Dissemination System (IIDS 2.0). The study revealed that majority of the farmers were seeking information on source of fingerling (31.85%), information on training in fisheries (19.32%), feeding management (10.18%) and subsidies/schemes(9.66%) respectively. The seasonal distribution of calls received revealed that majority of queries were received from the farmers during monsoon season. It was also found that clarity (4.5) and usefulness (4.5) of messages ranked highest in terms of average perceived credibility scores in 5point continuum against different parameters. Further, the inclusion of need based training programme and convergence with public and private extension system helped to develop an ICT based Stakeholder Interface (Experts-Line Departments-Fishpreneurs-Fish Farmers) in the region.
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