Factors affecting knowledge level of potato growers

The study was conducted in Chamba district of Himachal Pradesh to find out factors influencing knowledge level of potato growers. A multistage simple random sampling technique was followed to draw a sample of 125 potato growers proportionately from 15 villages of three community development blocks. Results indicate that about 41% potato growers possessed medium level of overall knowledge about scientific potato cultivation whereas 33.60 and 25.60% respondents had high and low knowledge level, respectively. However, the highest Mean Knowledge Index (MKI) was observed with respect to agronomic practices (72.80) and ranked first, followed by application of manure and fertilizers (61.20) and disease management (29.60), which were ranked second and third, respectively. Insect-pest management (29.20) and improved varieties (9.33) had secured fourth and fifth rank, respectively. Further, step-wise regression analysis showed that four independent variables viz. age (X1), mass media exposure (X11), innovativeness (X14), and scientific orientation (X15) could explain 46.39% of the variation. Further, the contribution of individual variable to the total R2 revealed that the most important contributor was scientific orientation (25.80%) followed by innovativeness (10.35%) and mass media exposure (9.74%). The least contributor was found to be age of the respondent (0.51%).