Recommended Technologies and Production Practices at Farm Level: Wheat Scenario

The adoption of technologies has been the concern of developing countries. The assessment of adoption process provides valuable information to the researchers, extensionists and policy makers to identify reasons of low yield. The present study aimed to observe the adoption level of farmers for wheat production technologies. A questionnaire was designed to gather information especially about the awareness and adoption of various aspects of wheat production technologies. A formal survey was conducted in the year 2005. Three districts (Sialkot, Gujranwala and Sheikhupura) of rice-wheat cropping zone and three (Faisalabad, T.T.Singh and Jhang) of mixedwheat zone were selected for the present study. A sample of 180 wheat growers (90 from each zone) was selected randomly for data collection. The results of the study indicated that some recommended technologies like land preparation, varieties, irrigation and weed control were well adopted by farmers while others like sowing time, sowing method, seed rate and fertilizer application were not well adopted. For instance, the study results revealed that only 54 percent of the respondents planted wheat in time and only 45 percent of the farmers applied wheat seed as per department recommendation. The farmers of survey area generally applied Nitrogen and Phosphatic fertilizers but they were not applying the Potash which is an important nutrient for the crops. Only 2 percent of the respondents applied fertilizer according to the recommendation of the department. So, there is strong need to intensify adoption of recommended technologies. As for as sources of information for dissemination of recommended production technologies are concerned, majority of the farmers (about 70 per cent) got information from fellow farmers followed by extension department (about 62) percent and mass media about (49 percent). The role of mass media is more important in the modern technological era but it is not being properly utilized.