Assessing rice growers’ knowledge on plant protection measures in sub-tropics of Jammu and Kashmir

Plant protection plays a vital role in modern agriculture. In the absence of adequate plant protection measures, the positive contribution of improved seeds, fertilizers and irrigation to output could completely nullify and farmers may incur heavy losses. Thus, a study was carried out on 120 rice growing farmers of Jammu district of Jammu and Kashmir state to find out the knowledge of farmers regarding plant protection practices. The results show that majority of the farmers (93%) possessed knowledge about herbicides. Only three and seven percent of the rice growers had knowledge of insecticides and fungicides, respectively. Thirty seven percent of the rice growers had applied recommended dosages of herbicide butachlor, whereas, the insecticide use was negligible (3%). In the present study, only education was found as the independent variable, which affects the knowledge of the respondents regarding plant protection. Thus training programmes related to plant protection to improve the knowledge of the farmers regarding plant protection practices, should be conducted.