Farmer’s awareness regarding nematodes infestation and their management

Information regarding knowledge of awareness about nematode infestation and its management collected from 236 farmers, belonged to 52 districts of 9 states of India. Of these, 21 districts of Uttar Pradesh; 10 districts of Rajasthan; 9 districts of Haryana; 7 districts of Delhi; 2 districts of Bihar; one each district of Punjab, Odisha and Uttarakhand, respectively. The study revealed that 69% of the farmers were unaware of the crop losses due to nematodes, while 31% of the farmers were aware about the nematode infestation to the crops. Aware farmers regarding their crop status, as a result, 78% of the farmer’s fields were infested due to plant parasitic nematode, while 22% of the farmers crop was healthy, 77% farmer’s fields did not improve after the treatment only 23% of the farmers got success in controlling nematodes or they got healthy crops. It’s therefore concluded that the unawareness of the farmers towards nematodes were resulted to cause heavy loss of the crop, thereby affecting the quality of the crop, thus benefits were reduced, which means they have economic losses. The unawareness led to mono cropping that enhances the nematode problem become acute. Under such situation training may be conducted on regular basis for the awareness to the farmers. So that farmers may produce healthy crops without any infestation by the nematodes. The data of unawareness were collected from Pusa Krishi Vigyan Mela 2019 at ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi.