Attitude of Sericulture Beneficiary Farmers towards the Activities of Technical Service Centres (TSCs) in Karnataka State of India

Abstract

Sericulture in Karnataka is in the process of modernization in many phases through new demand driven extension approach called Technical Service Centres (TSCs) located at the grass-root level (Hobli and Taluka level). These centres mainly involved in the dissemination of the technologies developed by the Research Institutes and also in supply of mulberry cuttings/saplings, monitoring mulberry cultivation, silkworm rearing and providing   information about loan facilities and subsidy schemes. There is a need to study the attitude of sericulture beneficiary farmers towards activities of TSCs. The study was conducted during 2018-20 in the Karnataka state of India. The Karnataka state was contributing 35.00 per cent of silk production in India. An ex-post facto research design was used or the study. An attitude was measured by Likert scale construction. The Ramanagara and Mandya districts were selected because these district having highest number of TSCs in Bangalore and Mysore division respectively. Mandya, Malavalli and K.R Pet taluks from Mandya district on the other hand Ramanagara, Channapatna and Kanakapura taluks from Ramanagara district were purposively selected for the study. Above taluks were selected based on top 3 taluks in TSCs in district. The four TSCs from each taluk leads to twelve from each district, Totally, 24 TSCs were selected for the study. Ten sericulture farmers under each TSC, collectively 240, were selected by using random sampling method. The study revealed that just little more than half (50.42%) of the sericulture farmers had medium favourable attitude towards activities of TSCs followed by high favourable attitude (35.00%) and only 14.58 per cent of the sericulture farmers had low favourable attitude. The probable reason might be majority of the sericulture farmers participated in trainings at Sericulture Training Institute at K.R Pet of Mandya District and Channapatna of Ramanagara district and also they were undergone for study tour to Kolar district. They were supplied subsidized mulberry saplings, bed disinfectants, growth promoters among sericulture farmers.