Impact of front line demonstration on mustard productivity and scientific temperament of mustard growers in Gorakhpur district (U.P.)

Front line demonstrations was conducted during the winter (rabi) seasons of 2018-19 and 2019-20 at two NICRA villages namely Mahopar and Girdharpur of block Kodiram, district Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, to study the impact of FLD on productivity of Brassica juncea (L.) Czernj. & Cosson] and scientific temperament of mustard growers. The frontline demonstrations were conducted on sixty five farmer’s field of both the village in each year. Variety NRCHB 101 of mustard with improved technologies under demonstration had significant impact on seed yield compared to local varieties and their production practice (control/FP). Further, mean results of the study revealed that adoption of improved production technology recorded additional yield 3.1 and 3.3 q/ha, increasement in yield was 22.9 and 30.1%, mean gross return (Rs. 56700/ha) and additional net return (Rs. 8800/ha), additional return (Rs. 11200/ha) and IBCR (3.66) over farmer practices. The improved technologies i.e. line sowing, thinning and control of aphid including improved variety NRCHB 101 showed the impact in demonstrations. It was found that a number of adopters for line sowing and line sowing + thinning and line sowing + thinning + aphid control were 20, 16.9 and 9.2 before demonstrations, which increased to 98.4, 92.3 and 100 per cent respectively after frontline demonstrations in adopted villages. The scientific temperament of the beneficiary farmer of FLDs was higher (87.3%) than the mean value of (52.3%) in non- beneficiary. Thus it can be stated that there is an impact of FLD programmes on scientific temperament of the mustard growers.