Influence of front line demonstration of new ragi variety ML-365

Abstract

Ragi is a staple food grain of Kolar district, however its productivity is reducing as the year pass by. This may be due to many reasons, important causes among them are; lack of high yielding varieties, low soil fertility, scanty and untimely rainfall, prolonged dry spells etc. thus making ragi cultivation less profitable. Inorder to increase the crop yields and enhance the farmers income, development and introduction of new high yieldings varieties are utmost imperative. Thus with the moto of familiarization of the lately developed variety, a demonstartions were conducted to know the performance of new ragi variety ML-365. The demo was conducted for two consecutive kharif seasons of 2017 and 2018 with total of 55 demonstrations spaning five villages. The results of the demo revealed that demonstrated variety performed better than the local variety with respect to plant height, number of tillers/plant and number of fingers/plant. The grain yield increased from 19.94 to 25.59 q/ha and 21.88 to 32.70 q/ha with newly introduced ragi variety during 2017 and 2018 respectively. The benefit cost ratio increased from 1.06 to 1.24 and from 1.13 to 1.55 respectively for the two years with the introduction of new variety. Thus adoption of new technology was able to increase the farmers earnings additionally by Rs. 9991.25 and 26890.00 during 2017 and 2018 respectively. The results from the experiments confirm that the demonstrated new ragi variety ML-365 illustrated better performance and was able to increase the farmers income.