Indian Journal of Ecology

Study was conducted with the objective of assessing and prioritizing training needs of shrimp farmers of Palghar district in Maharashtra. Palghar ranks first in terms of shrimp production and number of shrimp farms. Out of 65 registered shrimp farmers in Palghar district, information was collected from 55 shrimp farmers. An expert group of 30 comprising of academicians, extension workers, aqua feed industry representatives, government officials and progressive shrimp farmers were asked to locate potential training areas from the ten heads of Best Management Practices (BMPs) and also suggest any other training areas. A total of 40 potential training areas were suggested amongst which 11 were related to BMPs and 29 were outside the framework of BMPs. Importance Weightage (IW) was computed for the training areas and the score ranged from 0 to 1. Training areas which had IW score of 0.5 or more were selected and thus 22 areas were identified. Using Borich Need Assessment Model, shrimp farmers were asked to rate these 22 training areas on a 5 point Likert scale for their perceived importance and competency. Mean Weighted Discrepancy Score (MWDS) was computed to rank and prioritize the training areas. MWDS was highest for training areas viz. shrimp diseases, symptoms, identification, prevention and management, nursery system and management, feeding management, use of biosecurity measures and farming with biofloc technology and thus were prioritised. Training needs assessment has revealed that farmers prioritized six training areas from specific ten frameworks of BMPs. In addition, four training areas not in the framework of BMPs were also given high priority. It is concluded that to design any capacity development programme, it is necessary to do training need assessment with reference to importance and competency and training areas should be accordingly prioritized.