Bridging of Adoption Gaps of Technologies for Yield Improvement in Mulberry in Drought Prone Areas of South India

Sericulture is an agro-based cottage industry significantly contributing for the rural development. Mulberry cultivation is the basement of the industry. The impacts of Climatic changes severely affected the production and productivity of mulberry gardens in several sericultural clusters in South India. A study was conducted with the sericulture farmers of South India to find out the gaps in adopting the drought management technologies and bridge the gap. The farmer's wise adoption gaps were calculated for 12 identified drought management technologies of mulberry cultivation. Even though 84 per cent of the farmers are affected by water shortage the adoption gaps of the required technologies were higher. 80 per cent of farmers of Andhra Pradesh, 20 per cent of farmers of Karnataka and 56 per cent of farmers of Tamil Nadu state clusters have recorded high adoption gap (>66%). 20 per cent of farmers of Andhra Pradesh, 66 per cent of farmers of Karnataka and 36 per cent of farmers of Tamil Nadu state clusters have recorded medium adoption gap (33–66%). The frequency of technologywise adoption gap falls between 14 to 100. Hence extension communication programmes were conducted for two years to increase the awareness and bridge the Gaps in adoption. Conducting of awareness programmes helped to bridge the gaps from 4 to 100 per cent brought improvements on silkworm layings uptake, cocoon production at 67.3 and 79.8 per cent respectively with 8 per cent cocoon yield improvement for 100 layings were recorded in major sericulture states. Bridging of adoption gaps for all technologies in all states achieved due to the impact of the study were statistically highly significant at CD 0.05 level. Hence the study suggests for taking suitable efforts to increase the awareness and bridge the adoption gaps of drought management technologies to increase the quality linked silk production in the drought prone areas.