Study on technological gap analysis and Garrett ranking in pest management practices of temperate fruit crops at Kodaikanal Hills, Tamil Nadu

Kodaikanal is one of the highest producing temperate crops like Apple, Peach, Pear, Plum, Avocado and Kiwi. The interaction with farmers was carried out to collect the details about adaptation of plant protection measures. Totally nine package of practices were finalized to find out the technology gap. These practices were resistant variety, seed treatment, yellow sticky traps, light traps, predators, parasitoids, entomopathogen, botanicals and insecticides. The findings revealed that among the practices 96.6% farmers adopting chemical treatment, followed by botanicals (86.6%). A wide technological gap was observed in case of biocontrol related pest management using parasitoids and predators. The gap was 86.6% in predators and 95.0% in parasitoids. An overall technological gap analysis revealed that 60% of farmers had low technological gap followed by medium technological gap of 40% about the pest management practices. Further, lack of knowledge, lack of technical help, unconvincing merit of technology and non-availability of technical inputs complexity of practices were expressed as reasons for gap in adoption of pest management practices.