Nirajan Acharya¹ , Karishma Bhusal¹ , Kalika Bahadur Adhikari² , Prashanna Acharya¹ , Shashi Pandey¹ , Dharma Prasad Chapai¹

1 Faculty of Agriculture, Agriculture and Forestry University, Rampur, Chitwan, 44209, Nepal
2 Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness Management, Agriculture and Forestry University, Rampur, Chitwan, 44209, Nepal
Author    Correspondence author
International Journal of Horticulture, 2024, Vol. 14, No. 1   doi: 10.5376/ijh.2024.14.0003
Received: 11 Feb., 2024    Accepted: 12 Mar., 2024    Published: 22 Mar., 2024

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Acharya N., Bhusal K., Adhikari K.B., Acharya P., Pandey S., and Chapai D.P., 2024, Awareness and adoption status of good agricultural practices in mandarin (Citrus reticulata Blanco.) among farmers of Syangja, Nepal, International Journal of Horticulture, 14(1): 18-30 (doi: 10.5376/ijh.2024.14.0003)

Mandarin, as one of the important sub-tropical fruits under citrus species, is a high potential bearing crop in different mid-hill regions of Nepal, mostly Syangja due to climatic and topographical suitability. In addition, the use of scientific cultivation practices determines the production output. The research was designed from February to June 2022, to assess the awareness and adoption status of good agriculture practices among mandarin growers in Syangja, Nepal. The command areas of the Mandarin superzone under PMAMP were purposively selected for this study. The sampling was done by stratified proportionate random method to represent farmers of the Superzone area. Primary data was collected by face-to-face interviews, FGDs, and KII using a pre-tested semi-structured questionnaire from 98 respondents. IBM SPSS Statistics 26 software was used to analyze the data and Descriptive statistics, index values were used to interpret the findings. Findings revealed, that most of the respondents (56.1%) only partially knew about GAP and adoption was also at an early level in many farmers (39.8%). Awareness was found significantly higher (p=0.034) among males than females. Respondents from Putalibazar municipality were likely to be more aware (52) and adopting GAP (48) in Mandarin orchards than the rest of the area. The GAP adoption related to standards of planting material fertilizers, and soil additives was found high among (60.7%) and (51.4%) of the respondents respectively while it was low for the irrigation standards i.e. 12.7% of the total. Citrus fruit fly with an index of (0.94) was the severe pest and the powdery mildew with an index value of (0.91) was the major disease reported in the study area. Also, disease and pest problems were more pronounced as the high-ranked production constraints of Mandarin.

Adoption; GAP; Mandarin; Quality; Standards