Yield gap among coconut growers in Tumkur district of Karnataka

Abstract

Plantation crops are a vital section of our agrarian economy. They are important for the growth and development of farming sectors in many Indian states. Coconut is one important plantation crop which not only contributes significantly to foreign exchange earnings but also provides significant direct and indirect employment opportunities. So, coconut plantation’s impact on the socio-economic development of farming sector is profound and immense. The present study on Yield gap among the randomly selected 120 coconut growers from Tiptur, Turuvekere, Chikkanayakanahalli and Sira taluks of Tumkur district was conducted during the year 2022-23. The research objective was to assess the yield gap among coconut growers. The yield gap analysis showed that there existed an overall yield gap of about 28.90 per cent where Sira taluk had the highest yield gap of about 34.34 per cent among other taluks followed by Chikkanayakanahalli taluk showing 30.54 per cent yield gap followed by the Tiptur taluk with 26.70 per cent yield gap and then followed by Turuvekere taluk with 24.04 per cent of yield gap. Among the overall coconut growers more than two-fifth of coconut growers (46.67 %) fall under medium level of yield gap followed by high level of yield gap (27.50 %) and then by low level of yield gap (25.83 %). The Kruskal-wallis one-way Anova to know the significant difference in the yield gap among the taluks, disclosed that there is a significant difference in the yield gap among taluks with H-value of 15.03 significant at one per cent level.