FARMERS’ KNOWLEDGE ON POSTHARVEST PRACTICES OF VEGETABLES

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the farmers’ knowledge on post harvest practices of vegetables and explore the contribution of the selected characteristics of the vegetable growers on their knowledge on postharvest practices of vegetables. The selected characteristics were age, level of education, family size, farm size, vegetable cultivation area, experience in vegetable cultivation, annual family income, annual income from vegetable cultivation, commercialization of vegetables, training exposure on vegetable cultivation, adoption of postharvest practices and problem faced in vegetable cultivation. Data were gathered from 109 vegetable growers of six villages of Belgachi Union of Alamdanga Upazila under Chuadanga district by using a pretested interview schedule. For harmonious representation from each village 30 percent vegetable growers were selected as the sample by using stratified random sampling method. Stepwise multiple regression was used to examine the contribution of the selected characteristics of the vegetable growers on postharvest practices of vegetables. The findings revealed that majority of the respondents (56 percent) had medium knowledge on post harvest practices of vegetables, while 8.3 percent had low knowledge and 35.8 percent had high knowledge. Hence, more than half (64.30 percent) of vegetable growers had low to medium knowledge on postharvest practices of selected vegetables. Stepwise multiple regression exposed that adoption of postharvest practices, problem faced in vegetable cultivation, experience in vegetable cultivation, training exposure on vegetable cultivation, level of education had significant contribution on their knowledge on post harvest practices of vegetables. The standardized partial ‘b’ co-efficient of the 5 independent variables formed the equation contributing to 19.70 percent of the total variation on knowledge on postharvest practices of vegetables. Farmers faced higher problems in ‘lower price of vegetables’ followed by ‘high price of inputs’ and ‘disease attack’.