Adaptation of water conservation technique Mulching to mitigate water crisis due to River Sand mining in state Bihar

The present study was under-taken with a view to finding out the socio-economic profile of
vegetable-growing farmers; and to finding out the relationship between the socio-economic
characteristics of the respondents the vegetable adoption in river sand mining areas. It is observed that
source of irrigation gets reduced per village after river sand mining. The availability of ground water
and fresh water also decreased. Educated young farmers were found highly inclined towards water
conservation technologies like mulching. Land holding size recorded positive significant correlation
with the mulching technology, more land holding size easy to demonstrated technology and better
results. It is revealed that own land holding respondents have more earnings and had good income to
adopt vegetable cultivation. In this study, extent of adoption of twelve selected, scientific vegetable
cultivation practices was measured. A totalof 86 respondents were selected for the study. The practice
of a higher percentage in the unknown category was knew about protected cultivation and diseases
management and their control (95.34 %), followed by the selection of mulching sheets (93.02%) and
other charactericts. In the case of after training i.e., trained farmers, the practices of a higher
percentage grouped into complete knowledge category revealed that maximum knowledge gain was
recorded for marketing of vegetables (95.34%), followed by storage of fresh vegetables (76.74%),
while trained tribal women grouped into partial knowledge category were knowing the technology of

vegetable cultivation and scientific method of nursery raising (76.60%), followed by use of organic
fertilizers (74.47%). Overall knowledge gaps for the selected practices before and after training of
tribal women farmers were obtained (78.92) and (27.12) percent respectively and the “t” test is
reported significant for all vegetable cultivation practices with the use of mulching technologies. It
means training was significant for the women farmers. Trained farmers adopt technology in a better
way.