A study on recommended finger millet production technology by the farmers from Kolhapur district of Maharashtra, India

Millets are small grained cereals, referred as “Poor man’s cereals”. Millets are known in India from Vedic times and have their own position at religious functions and consumed in fasting. As small millets are highly nutritious now called as nutri millets even superior to rice and wheat in certain constituents like calcium, iron etc. In view of this millet diet is advocated to children's, pregnant women's, patients recovered from prolonged illness and anemic patients. The study was undertaken in Kolhapur district of Maharashtra State during the year 2016-17. Four tahasils namely Panhala, Karveer, Radhanagari and Shahuwadi were selected purposively for the study having good area under Finger Millet crop. On the basis of the highest area, 3 villages from each tahasil were selected. 10 Finger Millet growing farmers were selected on the basis of highest area for interview from the selected villages. Thus, in all 120 farmers were finally selected for the study. Most of the respondents had knowledge about the Finger Millet cultivation practices like type of soil and pre-cultivation (100.00 per cent), sowing distance with seed drill (93.33 per cent), seed rate (90.83 per cent), threshing and harvesting (100.00 per cent) and yields (88.33 per cent). In case of chemical seed treatment (15.84 per cent), organic seed treatment (3.33 per cent), crop protection from heliothis (13.33 per cent) and spraying of Zyneb against the control of blast disease (32.50 per cent) the respondents had little knowledge. Majority of the respondents had completely adopted the Finger Millet cultivation practices in respect of soil (92.50 per cent), Pre-cultivation like plowing and harrowing (88.33 per cent), weeding (100.00 per cent) and harvesting and threshing (100.00 per cent). A very few respondents had completely adopted the Finger Millet cultivation practices like application of FYM (5.00 per cent), chemical seed treatment (2.50 per cent). In case of plant protection, the adoption is very low i.e. control of aphids, leaf and grain cutting larvae (7.50 per cent), control of heliothis (1.66 per cent) and spraying of Zyneb against blast disease (7.50 per cent).