Analytical Study on Crop Status and Farmers’ Preference towards Crop Varieties and Hybrids in Namakkal District of Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu is one of the pioneer states in India, which is Farmer centric and has brought revolutionary initiatives in Agriculture to propel the productivity and production of major crops. The use of good quality seeds of improved high yielding varieties and hybrids is the master key for productive agriculture. Hence, the study was taken up in Namakkal district with an aim to assess the preference of using the varieties and hybrids and to identify the constraints of in adopting it. In Namakkal district, Thiruchengode block was purposively selected based onarea of cultivation. A sample of 30 respondents were selected using simple random sampling method and Participatory Rural Appraisal method was used for data collection. Percentage analysis and Cumulative frequency methods were used for data analysis. The study revealed that, the most of the farmers cultivated varieties like Sorghum (CO 30), Ragi (GPU 28), Blackgram (Vamban 4), Greengram (Vamban 2), Groundnut (TMV 7), Tapioca (MVD 1), Pomegrante (Bhagawa), Guava (Lucknow 49).The preferences expressed by the farmers for cultivating the above mentioned varieties and hybrids were high yield, highly suitable for all season, drought tolerant and less water consumption. In general, the farmers faced few constraints like, lack of awareness and knowledge about recent varieties, hybrids and technologies, monsoon failure, high labour cost, dry land area, lack of storage go-down facilities and farmers are not getting real returns of the crops due to climatic factor.