Watershed development has been proven a key for the fastening development of agriculture involving the farming community. Further, adoption behavior of participating farmers is very important to make the watershed development programme successful at different stages. The present study was conducted in Panchkula district of Haryana and focused on the adoption behavior of farmers to watershed technology in watershed development areas. A total of 21 watershed technologies pertaining to watershed development were identified. A total of 240 farmers of 8 villages were interviewed personally and a group discussion was also conducted in the present study. The study revealed that a large group of respondents adopted crop varieties for rain-fed conditions (82.92 per cent) followed by intercropping and peripheral bunding (81.25 per cent), cover cropping (71.25 per cent), plantation of trees and grasses on deep gully slops (62.08 per cent) gully plug (61.67 per cent), check dam (57.50 per cent), bamboo plantation in gully bed (41.67 per cent), grasses waterway (41.25 per cent). However, they did not show much interest for watershed technology like contour farming, well recharge, contour ploughing and contour trenching. The study indicates that there is need for making the concentrated efforts for convincing the farmers in the region for adopting the better practices advocated by the watershed experts so that the productivity of the farming system could be increased and sustained.
Adoption behavior, Rainfed conditions, Watershed technology
