Personal, socio-economic and psychological characteristics of onion growers in Chitradurga district of Karnataka

Abstract

Horticultural crops play a significant role in Indian economy by creating jobs, supplying raw materials to multiple food processing companies and enhancing farm profitability through increased production and foreign exchange from exports. At global level, India stands second in the production of potato, onion, cauliflower, brinjal and cabbage. Within the realm of vegetables, onion stand out as the foremost bulb crop and most favoured vegetable crop. In this backdrop, the present study was conducted in Chitradurga district of Karnataka in the year 2022-2023 to study the personal, socio-economic and psychological characteristics of onion growers with a total sample size of 120 growers. Ex-post facto research design was adopted. Data was collected by using pre-tested personal interview method. Further, appropriate statistical tools were employed to analyse the collected data. The study revealed that, nearly three fifth (59.16%) of onion growers were middle aged, two-fifth of respondents were educated up to high school, Majority of onion growers were had medium level family size (67.50%), farming experience (35.00%), annual income (45.00%), risk orientation (45.84%), innovative proneness (40.00%), scientific orientation (50.00%), market orientation (45.00%), extension contact (40.84%), mass media exposure (45.00%) and significant number (38.34%) of onion growers belonged to medium level of extension participation.