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PRINT ISSN : 2319-7692
Online ISSN : 2319-7706 Issues : 12 per year Publisher : Excellent Publishers Email : editorijcmas@gmail.com / submit@ijcmas.com Editor-in-chief: Dr.M.Prakash Index Copernicus ICV 2018: 95.39 NAAS RATING 2020: 5.38 |
White grub species Lepidiota mansueta having a biennial life cycle with non-feeding adults is recently occurred as a severe pest of Majuli, the largest river island in the world Biology of the beetle made it difficult for farmers to manage the pest conventionally. As emergency management of the beetle, scientists of ‘All India National Project (AINP) on white grubs and other soil arthropods’ under Assam Agricultural University, Jorhat adopted a farmers’ group approach considering the large-scale emergence of non-feeder adult beetles for the breeding purpose for a short period. The project formed farmers’ group in their project area. The study was conducted to assess member and non-member farmers’ attitude toward the group approach on the management of white grub (L. mansueta). An attitude scale was constructed for the study which Cronbach’s alpha reliability was 0.89. The sample size was 200 which included 100 respondents from farmer’s group and 100 respondents from non-group members. The findings revealed that farmers belonged to groups had a more favourable attitude than non-members and independent t- value between the mean of two samples significantly differed at p<0.01. Item analysis of the attitude scale scores revealed that group members had significantly high mean score than non-members in most of the items. The findings proposed to give more emphasis to mobilise non-member farmers for forming groups. The study suggested that the group should be involved in different activities for throughout the year for making it more efficient and sustainable.