Assessment of Farmers Perceptions Regarding Sugarcane Insect-Pest and The

Date : Jan 2016 - Jun 2016

An evaluation survey of sugarcane growing areas of tehsil Sargodha, Pakistan was conducted during April 2016 to find out the farmers perceptions regarding sugarcane insect pest and their management. The study was carried out by flexible semi-structured interview survey method questionnaires For this purpose 70 farmers from different unions councils of tehsil Sargodha were interviewed regarding knowledge level about sugarcane insect pest, major pest of sugarcane, different problems regarding application of insect pest management, training and information related to insect pest management, and different control of pest management and advisory services from which they get help. 61.4% of the respondents fall between the age bracket of 35 and 54 years. 30% farmers have primary education, 15.7 have middle education, and 24.3% farmers are matric pass. Only 21.4% had no education and the mean farming experience is 15.1 years. All the farmers which were interviewed have total land 711 acres and the land in which sugarcane is cultivated is only 162 acre which is very low as compare to other crops. The results also indicated that Most of the Farmers are aware of stem borer (Chilo tumidicostalis), early shoot borer (Chilo infuscatellus), top shoot borer (Scirpophaga incertulus), root borer (Emmalocera depressela), termite (Odontotermies obsesus), mealy bug (Sacchariccous sacchari) and scale insect (Melanapis glomerata) were major pest. In addition, the results also indicated that farmers claimed that they suffered various problems for sugarcane insect-pest management such as costly management, technical knowledge to manage the insect-pest, timely and accurate diagnosis to manage the insect pest of sugarcane and unjudcious use of fertilizer. The results also indicated that 55.7% of total farmers said that the training and information from seminar and short courses are low, 48.6% total farmers said that training and information from extension field staff are