Assessment of technological inputs for major pulses in Bundelkhand region

To assess the availability of technological inputs by pulse growing farmers, three villages namely Baank, Bannki and Bilhari in Hamirpur district of Bundelkhand region in Uttar Pradesh were selected as the study area. Data was collected from 180 farmers belonging to small, marginal and large category (as per land holding) in these villages during 2008–09. The respondents were categorized into four groups so as to study the extent of availability of recommended inputs. Analysis of data revealed that the overall input availability with farmers was lowest in pigeonpea followed by chickpea and lentil. The basic inputs for chickpea such as seed cum fertilizers drill, tractor/cultivator, labour and bullocks as per recommended practice were available only with 46, 43, 36 and 33% of farmers, respectively. Other important inputs namely, pheromone traps, sprayer, Rhizobium, fungicide, insecticide and improved variety were not available with 95, 95, 93, 91, 76 and 70% of farmers, respectively growing chickpea. Even none had inputs like Trichoderma for soil treatment and sulphur for crop nutrition. For lentil, the recommended inputs such as seed cum fertilizers drill, bullocks and tractor/cultivator were available with 66, 68 and 58% of farmers, respectively. However, the inputs like sprayer, insecticide, fungicide, pump set and improved variety were not available with the majority of lentil growers (91, 86, 86, 76 and 75% of farmers, respectively). Similarly the requisite inputs for pigeonpea viz., pheromone traps, sprayer, insecticide, phosphatic fertilizer, improved variety and nitrogenous fertilizers were not available with 95, 91, 85, 76, 75 and 70% of farmers, respectively. None of these farmers had ridge maker or applied zinc, Trichoderma and Rhizobium for pigeonpea cultivation.