Promotion of drought tolerant groundnut varieties in Tiruchirappalli district of Tamil Nadu through interventions

The farmers of Tiruchirappalli District were found cultivating age old groundnut varieties VRI 2, TMV 7 and other local varieties and hence were getting lower productivity. An on farm research TRIAL was conducted during 2017-2018 with main objective to assess suitable drought tolerant groundnut variety in terms of yield, acceptability and adoption potential during Kharif season. The experiment was laid out in five replications in five locations with four treatments in Manapparai block of Tiruchirappalli district as a rainfed crop. The treatments were TO1-Farmers’ Practice - Groundnut variety VRI2; TO2-variety CO 7, TO3 - variety VRI 8 and TO4- variety Kadiri 9. The results revealed that the groundnut variety VRI8 gave higher yield (42% higher than local) followed by Kadiri 9 and CO7 compared to local or old varieties in use by the farmers. The plant population stand was higher in VRI 8 (23.2 no/m²) and the number of pods per plant (31) than in other varieties and performed well under drought situation, even it withstood delayed irrigation for 10-15 d. Through KVK interventions like conduct of on and off campus training, field days, focus group meetings, sponsored trainings and supply of improved groundnut technologies for getting higher yield. It could be concluded that the groundnut varieties VRI 8 and Kadiri 9 were almost on par in yield parameters and application of crop booster groundnut rich resulted in enhanced yield up to 25 per cent. Major constraints faced by the farmers were the pod size differed for all the varieties so the market rate, lack of knowledge to store the latest varieties and sell them separately and no timely supply of seeds from government/Institutions.