About

Agriculture Development
ICAR Krishi Vigyan Kendra, CENDECT, Kamatchipurm,Theni(Dt)


ICAR KVK,CENDECT is a District level Agricultural Training, Extension and Research Institution sponsored by Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), Government of India. It was started in March 1995 for benefit of farmers in Theni District. It aims at transferring the farm worthy technologies to the farmers, farm women, rural youth and the extension workers through trainings and demonstrations. Dr.P.PATCHAIMAL is the Chairman of CENDECT KVK.

The main objective of the Kendra is to impart the latest technical knowledge to the farmers through work experience, employing the principles of “Teaching by Doing” and “Learning by Doing”.

MANDATE OF KRISHI VIGYAN KENDRA:
  • Technology assessment, refinement and demonstration of technology/products through the following activities of KVK.
  • On-farm testing to identify the location specificity of agricultural technologies under various farming systems.
  • Frontline demonstrations to establish its production potentials on the farmers’ fields.
  • Training of farmers to update their knowledge and skills in modern agricultural technologies, and training of extension personnel to orient them in the frontier areas of technology development.
  • To work as resource and knowledge centre of agricultural technology for supporting initiatives of public, private and voluntary sector for improving the agricultural economy of the district.
  • In order to create awareness about improved technology, a large number of extension activities will be taken up.
  • The seeds and planting materials produced by the KVKs will also be made available to the farmers.

The main activities:

A. ON FARM TESTING (OFT)

On Farm Research is a set of procedures for adaptive research whose purpose is to develop recommendations for representative groups of farmers. In On-farm research, farmers participate in identifying problems and its priorities, managing experiment and evaluating results. On-farm research, therefore, is an adaptive research with farmer’s perspectives. The objectives of On-farm research is to identify existing inputs or practices that might help to solve major problems of many farmers in a defined study area.
The procedure of On-farm research has five steps viz.,

  1. Diagnosis
  2. Planning
  3. Experimentation
  4. Assessment / Evaluation of results
  5. Recommendation and diffusion

Diagnosis: The diagnostic stage involves collecting and analyzing information in order to design On-farm experiments. In this steps, an understanding of farmers’ circumstances and practices are made in order to; i) understand the farming system, and system interaction; ii) identify possible productivity problems; and iii) begin to develop hypotheses on possible solutions.

Planning: The planning on On-farm research is used to identify experimental factors to be included in on-farm experiments, as well as to suggest other research activities. There are six practical steps for research planning.

  1. Listing problems
  2. Ranking problems
  3. Identifying causes of problems
  4. Diagram problems and causes
  5. Listing possible solutions
  6. Screening possible solutions for feasibility

Experimentation: On-farm experiments are conducted in the fields of representative farmers and to examine a small number of experimental variables. Those experiments may be described and classified in a number of ways, but regardless of classification most of them progress from exploring production problems, to testing possible solutions, and then to verifying recommendations and demonstrating them with farmers.

Assessment: The results of the on-farm experiments should be analyzed carefully. The analysis requires an assessment of farmers’ reactions and opinions. A thorough agronomic interpretation, and careful statistical and economic analysis will be helpful to this stage. The results of the assessment are then used to plan future research and to make recommendations for farmers.

Recommendation and Diffusion: When researchers are confident that they have enough information, they can formulate recommendations and non-recommendations can be released for demonstration on a larger area in the farmers’ fields.
KVK submits the Action Plan for technical intervention to ICAR – ATARI. Based on the approval KVK conducts On Farm Testing in Field Crops, Horticulture Crops, Farm Implements, Enterprises and Livestock in the district.


B. FRONT LINE DEMONSTRATION (FLD)

The Front-line demonstrations is to demonstrate newly released crop production and protection technologies and its management practices in the farmers’ field under different agro-climatic regions and farming situation. While demonstrating the technologies in the farmers’’ fields, the scientists are required to study the factors contributing higher crop production, field constraints of production and thereby generate production data and feedback information.

Front line demonstrations are conducted in a block of two to four hectares’ land in order to have better impact of the demonstrated technologies on the farmers and field level extension functionaries. the front-line demonstrations are different than the normal demonstrations conducted by the extension functionaries.

The special features of FLD are:
  • FLD are conducted under the close supervision of the scientists.
  • Only newly released technologies or those likely to be released in near future are selected.
  • FLDs are organized in a block of two to four hectares involving all those farmers whose plots fall in the identified demonstration block.
  • Only critical inputs and training are provided from the scheme budget, remaining inputs are supplied by the farmers themselves.
  • Training of the farmers associated with the frontline demonstration is a pre-requisite for conducting such demonstrations.
  • The target audience of FLDs is both farmers and the extension officers. The purpose is to be convince extension functionaries and farmers together about the potentialities of technologies for further wide scale diffusion.
  • FLDs are used as a source of generating data on factors contributing higher crop yields and constraints of production under various farming situations.

C.TRAININGS:
Training programmes are organized with the purpose of providing new scientific knowledge and developing new skills required for adoption of latest agriculture, horticulture, veterinary and home management technologies.