Abstract

Ajmer district is famous for vegetable cultivation and vegetable crops suffer heavy losses due to serious pests during its crop period. Integrated Pest Management (IPM) practices play a vital role in managing these pests. One of the important mandate of the Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK) is to organise training programme for “In-service personnel” to update them with latest available technologies in the field of Agriculture. Therefore, the present investigation was carried out at KVK, Ajmer with a view to evaluate the effectiveness of in-service training conducted on IPM practices for major crops for the extension personnel. Forty four extension personnel of the Department of Agriculture, Government of Rajasthan have attended this training course in two batches. The data were collected with the help of semi-structured schedule. The schedule was developed with the help of Entomologist of KVK Ajmer and Pathologist of National Research Centre on Seed Spices, (NRCSS) Ajmer. Result revealed that, there was a significant gain in knowledge on IPM by the extension personnel at the end of the training programme as their mean percent score increased from 39.65 to 68.69 with the gain of 29.04 mean percent score. It was also concluded that, the most of the trainees rated the training components excellent. However, some participants have expressed that, the training components viz., participants’ involvement, lodging facilities and level of discussion were needed more emphasis. The main suggestion made by the respondents was that the training must be of 5 to 7 days duration. This may be attributed to the fact that, the training programme was need based and conducted in effective manner.

Key words: Integrated Pest Management (IPM), extension personnel, pests, Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK).