The Extent Contribution of Independent Variables to the Knowledge and Adoption of Mobile Agro-advisory Services by the Farmers in Udupi District of Karnataka State of India

The study was conducted during 2016-17 in Udupi district of Karnataka state of India. The farmers who are registered for mobile agro-advisory services for receiving all agricultural information through SMS were considered as a target group for the study. There were 4000 registered Agro-met Advisory users and 1400 registered users in KVK. Among those registered farmers 40 farmers from each existing three taluks viz. Udupi, Karkala & Kundapur were selected as respondents for the study. Thus the sample size of the study comprises of 120 respondents. The contribution of selected independent variable with the knowledge and adoption were analysed. It could be observed from the results that, ‘F' value (6.412) obtained was significant at one per cent level of significance indicating that all the independent variables put together contributed significantly to the variation in the extent of the knowledge level of the farmers. The coefficient of determination (R2) was 0.5316, which revealed that the variation in the extent of knowledge about mobile messages by the farmers was together explained by all the independent variables selected for the study. It could be observed from the results that, ‘F' value (5.160) obtained was significant at one per cent level of significance indicating that, all the independent variables put together contributed significantly to the variation in the extent of adoption of mobile agro-advisory services by the farmers. The coefficient of determination (R2) was 0.408, which revealed that the variation in the extent of adoption of mobile agro-advisory services by the farmers was together explained by all the independent variables selected for the study. Hence, the present study helps the Krishi Vignan Kendras (KVKs) and Government for further improvement in providing mobile agro-advisory services to the farming community.