Economics of Tissue culture Banana: A Case Study of Gorakhpur District in Uttar Pradesh

The technological improvements play key role in enhancing the yield of agricultural crops. Tissue culture technology is a key intervention in banana, which have the potential to benefit the banana farmers in multiple ways. We have tested this by using primary survey of 100 farmers from the Gorakhpur district of Uttar Pradesh, a traditional sugarcane cultivated belt which is fast getting covered by banana plantations. Both adopters and non-adopters of the technology were surveyed and their performance was analysed using cost concepts, Cobb-Douglas production function, frontier analysis etc. The adopters of tissue culture technology were young and educated farmers, who had better land holding and household income. As compared to the sucker propagated banana, tissue culture banana yieldedbetter. Planting material, human labour, plant protection chemicals, machine and bullock labour had a positive and significant impact on the yield of tissue culture banana. Frontier technical efficiency analysis revealed that the average technical efficiency level of adopters was 0.94 and that of non-adopter was 0.86. The risk due to wind, drought and other abiotic factors was identified as the major constraint in the adoption of tissue culture banana in the region.