Impact of Knowledge on TN-IAMP Black Gram Growers in Madurai District of Tamil Nadu

The World Bank Supported TN IAMP (Irrigated Agriculture Modernisation Project) is a follow up of IAMWARM (Irrigated Agriculture Modernisation and Water-Bodies Restoration and Management Project). Normally Western Ghats are receiving limited average annual rain fall of about 925 mm, lower than the national average 1200 mm. The project will adopt climateresilient approaches that promotes sustainable use of land and water resources. This study was undertaken in the Madurai district of Tamil Nadu state during 2019. Totally 8 villages were selected from the study area. The respondents of 120 TN-IAMP black gram beneficiaries were selected using purposive sampling method. Knowledge is pre-requisite for adoption of an innovation. Crop production technology aspects reveals that (100 percent) of the beneficiaries possessed knowledge. With regard of grading and storage process (57-77 percent) of the beneficiaries were possessed knowledge. It might be observed that majority (81.70 per cent) of the TN-IAMP beneficiaries had medium level of knowledge.


INTRODUCTION
The World Bank Supported TN IAM (Irrigated Agriculture Modernisation) Project is a follow up of IAMWARM (Irrigated Agriculture Modernisation and Water-Bodies Restoration and Management) Project which has made significant development impacts in the state by modernising irrigation infrastructure, improving water use efficiency, enhancing yields and productivity of agriculture in a climate resilient production systems, diversification towards high value crops, strengthening the institutional reforms through Participatory Irrigation Management (PIM) and Water Users Association (WUA). Tamil Nadu is one of the water starved states in India endowed with only 3 percent of the water resources in India. The state located in the rain shadow region of the Western Ghats is receiving limited average annual rain fall of about 925 mm, lower than the national average 1200 mm. The interventions of this component are aimed at increasing productivity of mostly key crops, promoting diversification of agriculture production systems, enhancing resilience and improving farmer access to markets in project sub-basins. The project will adopt climateresilient approaches that promotes sustainable use of land and water resources. The component consists of three subcomponents, 1. Agricultural intensification and diversification 2. Improving alternative livelihood sources through livestock and inland aquaculture 3. Marketing, value-addition and post-harvest management.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
This study was undertaken in the Madurai district of Tamil Nadu state. Madurai District of Tamil Nadu was purposively selected for this study because, TN-IAMP was implemented under Tamil Nadu Agricultural University. In this district, areas were covered under sirumalaiyar and sathaiyar sub-basin since its cover a more ayacut area. Madurai district consists of 7 taluks and among this taluks Alanganallur and Vadipatti blocks were selected for this study. Among these blocks totally 8 villages were selected based on TN-IAMP beneficiaries identified. The respondents of 120 TN-IAMP black gram beneficiaries were selected using purposive sampling method as follows.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION Knowledge on TN-IAMP black gram beneficiaries
Knowledge is pre-requisite for adoption of an innovation, as this enables the farmers to understand completely the recommended technologies, innovation and its attributes. The innovation, diffusion and communication of relevant technologies will have little effect unless farmers gain the knowledge about the technologies communicated and feel a need to put them into practice. Hence, it is necessary to analyse the knowledge level of respondents. were possess knowledge on harvest indices (colour turns brown to black), harvesting methods (hand removal / by sickle) and processing (separation of seeds and drying).

Practice-wise level of knowledge
With regard of grading and storage process (57-77 percent) of the beneficiaries were possess knowledge on proper grading of seeds (elimination of broken and discoloured seeds) and storage (with gunny bags).

Overall knowledge level of TN-IAMP beneficiaries
To access the overall knowledge level of the TN-IAMP beneficiaries on black gram cultivation, the necessary data were collected, analysed and the findings are furnished in the below Table 3. The beneficiaries were categorized as low, medium and high knowledge level categories. It might be seen from above table that majority (81.70 percent) of the TN-IAMP beneficiaries were had medium level of knowledge and followed by nearly meagre percent of beneficiaries had low (16.60 percent) and high (1.70 percent) of knowledge.

CONCLUSION
From the above findings, majority of TN-IAMP beneficiaries (98.30 percent) were categorised under low to medium level of knowledge on recommended practices, because of most of beneficiaries were functionally literate to middle school level, medium level of social participation, information seeking behaviour and innovativeness. In future, beneficiaries might to follow TN-IAMP for another five years or more which leads to good result in knowledge and increasing the rate of adoption rate on future on this technologies.