Assessing Farmers’ Knowledge, Perceptions, Varietal Preferences and Constraints to Groundnut Production, the Pra Approach

Abstract

Groundnut is cultivated in all tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world due to its adaptability to a varied range of soil and climatic conditions. Information about farmers' knowledge, perceptions, varietal preferences and production constraints in groundnuts are limited. The current study generally sought to exploit groundnut varieties, both landraces and improved to assess farmers’ knowledge and perceptions of the main constraints to groundnut production and determine their varietal preferences, based on PRA. A participatory rural appraisal (PRA) aimed at identifying and assessing farmers’ knowledge and perception of the main production constraints and their preferred groundnut varieties, ranked drought (4.43), yield potential (3.53) and pests (3.50) and diseases (3.23) as the major and most important production constraints. Majority (41.00%) of the farmers who were aged between 40 and 49, had no form of education (74.67%), and maintained an average farm size of 1-4 acres, out of which groundnut farm size was about 1 to 2 acres preferred ‘Chinese’, ‘Agric-Manipinta’ and ‘Obolo’ groundnut varieties based on the traits; high yield potential (pod and seed size), ease of harvesting, drought-tolerance, earliness and high market value. More males (75.17%) were involved in groundnut production than females and farmers’ main sources of information were colleague farmers and the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA).