Bio-control agents are an important component of integrated pest management and help to counteract insecticide resistant pests, withdrawal of chemicals and minimize the usage of pesticides. Although the adoption of Bio-control agents is strongly affected by the socioeconomic environment in which they are to be applied and by farmers' attitudes, these factors have been poorly investigated in bio-control agent's research and development programs. The main purpose of this study is to examine the socio-economic status and communicational characteristics of farmers using bio-control agents in Chhattisgarh plains zone. Face to face interviews of 200 respondents was conducted to collect the data for the study. Purposively sampling method was used to collect data from farmers of study area. The results showed that 43.00 per cent of the respondents were marginal farmers (Below 1.0 ha) and majority (36.40%) has agriculture only as their sole occupations however only about one-third (32.50%) of the respondents were at the income range upto ₹ 50,000. In mass media exposure and extension contact farmers using bio-control agents were found under medium level categories.
The present study aims to analyze the effectiveness of the multimedia training modules in terms of knowledge gain among bio-control user’s farmers. The study was purposively conducted in Chhattisgarh where, a total of 200 biocontrol user’s farmers were selected randomly and divide into eight groups equally. Bio-control agents was selected as farm technology based on new and need based one. The Barsch learning style inventory was used to access the learning style of farmers and results showed that majority (67.67%) of them were preferred visual learning style. The knowledge was assessed through in-build knowledge test on the specific aspects. From the result, at Dhamtari district, the Group-I (Katalboard) has highest (144.37%) knowledge gain and in Raipur district Group-V (Baronda) has lowest (37.60%) knowledge gain. The overall knowledge gain ranges from 37.60 per cent to 144.37 per cent in the study area; this variation indicated that the farmers having different level of knowledge aspects in the biocontrol agents. There was also statistically significant gain in knowledge (t-test 23.91) from pre to post exposure mean scores which can be interpreted that the multimedia training module had significant effect on the knowledge gain on bio-control agents farming practices. The results of the study clearly indicate the importance of multimedia training modules in transfer of knowledge and skill on scientific farming practices.
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