FARMER’S KNOWLEDGE ON MUSHROOM CULTIVATION

The main focus of the study was to determine the knowledge of mushroom cultivation by the farmers and to explore the relationships between the knowledge of mushroom cultivation of the farmers and their selected characteristics. The study was conducted at five villages of Sadar Upazila under Faridpur district which is adjacent to Bhajandanga Horticulture Centre, Faridpur. Data were collected randomly selected 97 trained farmers from an update list of 972 farmers of the study area. The data were collected through personal contact with a well structured pretested interview schedule during the period from 01 to 31 August 2012. The study revealed that the highest proportion 60.82 percent of the respondents had medium knowledge on mushroom cultivation, while 27.64 percent had low knowledge and the rest 16.50 percent had highest knowledge on mushroom cultivation. Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation co-efficient (r) was computed to explore the relationships between knowledge on mushroom cultivation of the trained farmers and their selected characteristics. The correlation analysis indicated that education, belief about mushroom, neighborhood influence, length of training, organizational participation and adoption of mushroom cultivation of the farmers had significant positive relationships with their knowledge on mushroom cultivation. Age, family size, cosmopoliteness and extension contact had no significant relationships with their knowledge of mushroom cultivation.