ADOPTION AND INFORMATION SEEKING BEHAVIOUR OF OKRA GROWERS IN HOMESTEADS

Ensuring sustainability in production relies significantly on the provision of accurate information at the appropriate time and location. The information seeking behaviour can significantly influence the decision making and adoption process. It is imperative to acquire an understanding of farmers’ information-seeking behavior, as it plays a crucial role in restructuring existing agricultural information systems and formulating novel models. Keeping this in view, a study was conducted among 120 okra growing homesteads of Kollam district in Kerala. The main focus of the study was to identify the adoption and information seeking behaviour of okra growers in the homesteads. Scientific practices for okra cultivation were enlisted and ranked separately based on the adoption score. The results showed that commonly adopted scientific cultivation practices in okra crop were soaking of seeds in water for 24 hours for ensuring better germination, application of recommended dose of farmyard manure as basal dose and varieties released from Kerala Agricultural University. The findings also pointed that majority of the respondents had medium to high level information seeking behaviour. Among various sources, majority of the growers preferred informal sources more than other formal sources. In case of mass media sources, highest dependency was noticed for newspapers and television.