According to approved project proposal, the trial entitled Dissemination of BARI released fruit varieties at farmer’s level and demonstration of improved modern technologies of different important major and minor fruit cultivation practices. As mentioned earlier, the important fruits are mango, litchi, banana, lemon, guava, dragon fruit, kul, lotkon, aonla, carambola, malta, coconut, pummelo, wax jambu, golden apple etc. which were distributed among 60 farmers of Damudda and Gosairhat Upazilla in Shariatpur district and 60 farmers of Babuganj and Muladi Upazilla in Barisal district. Each farmers of Damudda and Goshairhat Upazilla have got 50 plants of different fruits. Besides in Barisal district firstly 26 plants have been distributed to each farmer which will be targeted upto 50 plants for each farmer. In July to September 2018, 60 farmers were selected with the help of Upazilla Agriculture Officer and Upazilla Extension Officer of Damudda and Goshairhat Upazilla. The other 60 farmers of Muladi, and BabuganjUpazilla have also been selected in 2018 and saplings have also been distributed among 60 farmers of Muladi and Babuganj Upazilla in 29 May, 2019. Before distribution of the saplings, the selected fields were prepared with organic and chemical fertilizers. After preparation of fields the saplings were carried out from BARI, Gazipur and Jaintapur, Sylhet to Barisal district.
Site and Farmer selection
This technology has been demonstrated for the period of (July 2018 to December 2020) in forty five farmer’s field of Shidda at Damudda Upazilla and fifteen farmer’s field of Nagerpara, Goshairhat Upazilla in Shariatpur district during July 2018 to December 2020. Fields have been selected with the active participation of Upazilla Agriculture Officer and Upazilla Extension Officer of both Upazilla.
Data collection for the benchmark study
It is mentioned here that data collection for benchmark study (information of the farmers before the project) was greatly hampered because of pandemic. Therefore, interview of targeted farmers was not possible. It was possible to take interview only from 30 farmers from Shariatpur district this year. Hopefully, information of rest of the farmers of the project of both Shariatpur and Barisal districts will be collected next year.
Data were collected by two types of structured questionnaires with cost-return and without cost-return. Questions of two questionnaires were all the same except cost-return related questions. Actually, cost-return questions were added to the questionnaire that was made before. However, only four responded farmers information about cost-return were taken into account for analysis. Other information was considered for all the respondent farmers. The collected data from the respondent farmers were summarized and analyzed as per objectives of the study. Descriptive statistics was used to analyze the data using excel software.