CONSTRUCTION AND STANDARDIZATION OF KNOWLEDGE TEST TO MEASURE THE KNOWLEDGE OF FARMERS ON WATER MANAGEMENT PRACTICES IN SUGARCANEShanjeevika, V., Balasubramaniam, P., Venkata Pirabu, J., Duraisamy, M.R. and Venkatesa Palanichamy, N.Abstract About two- third of population in India depends on agriculture either directly or indirectly for survival. Agriculture has boosted up the GDP to 18.80% (2021-22) from 17.80% (2021-22). But the agriculture sector has always been at the mercy of water supplies. Farmers now confront even higher uncertainties about water availability due to climatic changes. Though water management practices are being followed by farmers it has not covered the entire state. Hence, it is high time to popularize and make farmers adopt water management practices to all the sectors of farming community. The first level in the adoption process is to know the knowledge of farmers on a particular innovation. In this study, knowledge test was constructed to know the level of knowledge on water management practices among sugarcane growers. Sugarcane is one of the water intensive crops which requires 1500-3000 litres of water to produce 1 Kg of sugarcane. However, due to lack of region specific test to measure the level of knowledge of sugarcane farmers on water management practices, it was deemed necessary to develop a test specifically for this purpose. |