Tropentag 2023, September 20 - 22, Berlin, Germany "Competing pathways for equitable food systems transformation: trade-offs and synergies."

Do groundnut haulm quality influence farmers decision on variety adoption? An explorative study from an eastern Indian state

¹International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Policies, Institutions & Livelihoods (PIL), Kenya
²International Livestock Research Institute, PIL, India

Abstract

Crop residue contributes major shares (61%) of total dry matter intake in mixed crop-livestock systems, while dual-purpose crops play an important role-grain provides feed for human and crop residue used as feed for the livestock and will continue as available land is declining due to urbanisation and population growth. Groundnut is one of the important dual-purpose crops, where its haulm provides high-protein to ruminants especially in low-rainfall/dry land agro-economy system. Identifying the improved variety having both high pod yield and better haulm quality and disseminating will have high positive impact on the livestock productivity. Having importance of groundnut for both food and feed, ICRISAT and ILRI embarked on selecting superior varieties of groundnut in India having better pod yield and nutritive quality of their haulms since 2006. As a result, a new improved variety namely ICGV91114 was identified and released nationwide in 2007 including Odisha. This variety (local name ‘devi’) was successfully adopted by the government system and also widely adopted by farmers in Odisha.

In this context, the study aimed to provide both qualitative and quantitative insights into the adoption of ‘devi’ variety by the farmers through focus group discussion covering 439 villages from 9 districts. Two stage sampling methods were followed to identify the villages.

Farmers’ choice of adopting groundnut variety depends on various factors like grain yield, availability of seed, availability on time, haulm quality, haulm yield and such others. We observed that adoption of particular groundnut variety is depending upon the grain yield followed by seed availability in particular time (especially during planting period) and haulm quality. Though, farmers prefer to grow ‘devi’ variety as it has high pod yield and better haulm quality, due to non-availability of seed, farmers plant other varieties that are available during the planting period (January-February). While disseminating the devi variety, stakeholders involved in the releasing process did not consider the haulm quality, only focused pod yield. Therefore, to improve the adoption of improved dual-purpose groundnut or any other crop, there needs to disseminate the information on benefits of dual-purpose crops among farmers, improve the seed value chain system and marketing.

Keywords: Dual-purpose crop, groundnut, haulm quality and adoption

Contact Address: Braja Swain, International Livestock Research Institute, PIL, NASC Complex, DPS Satri Marg, , 110012 New Delhi, India, e-mail: brajacdsgmail.com