Scientific Rationality and Adoption of Indigenous Hill Banana Cultivation

Abstract

Indigenous Tribal Horticultural Practices (ITHPs) have facilitated intensive farming for a long period of time without significant deterioration of land or decline in crop production. The tribes of the Kolli hills of Namakkal district in Tamil Nadu possessed rich tradition, heritage and experience in agriculture. Their rich wisdom in ITHPs can effectively be utilized for sustainable agricultural development of tribal areas by appropriately blending the ITHPs with recommended production technological package. Hence, there is an immense need to collect, document, rationalize and refine those ITHPs before they become totally obsolete. In this context a study was done for collecting, classifying, documenting, analyzing the rationality, and studying the adoption of the selected ITHPs in Hill banana. About 26ITHPs on Hill banana, in different clusters of villages of Kolli hills were documented. For assessing the rationality, the selected ITHPs were divided into two groups. The first group consisted of 22ITHPs were related to crop production and the second 4I ITHPs were related to plant protection. Having identified and selected the list of ITHPs with their rationality scores, further analysis was undertaken to test verify their extent of adoption. The rational and effective ITHPs should be blended into the technology package for transfer of technology, so that the agricultural development will be sustainable.