Abstract
The purpose of this study was to determine the yield gap-ll in cultivation of modern boro rice and to explore the causes associated with the yield gap in relation to the 17 selected independent variables of the farmers. Data were collected from a sample of 250 farmers selected through multistage sampling procedure from Fulbari union of Fulbari Upazila under Kurigram district during December 2004 to July 2005. The results revealed that majority (68%) of the farmers had medium yield gap (6.74 -23.27%) compared to 16 percent low yield gap (0.50 -6.73%) and 16 percent high yield gap (23.28 -39.10%) in cultivation of modern boro varieties. However, compared to the potential yield (demonstration plot's yield) the averaged yield gap of the cultivating modern boro varieties of the farmers was 15.00 percent. Variety-wise gaps were 9.89, 23.23, 13.52, 12.92, 11.79 and 18.15% for the BRRI dhan28, BRRI dhan29, Iratom-24, BR14, BR12 and Binadhan-6, respectively. Both chi-square and correlation tests indicated that farming experience, knowledge on modern boro rice cultivation, attitude towards modern boro rice cultivation, information source use, risk orientation, decision making ability, practice gap, and constraints faced by the farmers had positive significant relationships with the yield gap. Stepwise regression analysis revealed that three variables namely practice gap (contributing 63.6%), constraints (contributing 12.9%) and knowledge on modern boro rice cultivation (contributing 0.8%) were significant variables of the farmers which jointly contributed 77.6 percent variation in yield gap. Path analysis revealed that knowledge of the farmers on modern boro rice cultivation had negative direct effect (- 0.128) on yield gap while constraints had the highest positive effect (0.448) compared to practice gaps (0.378). More precisely, practice gap in irrigation, dose of MP, time of 1st top-dressing of urea, age of seedling and maturity of harvesting were among the selected practices which contributed notably to the yield gap. On the other hand, among the most significantly contributing constraints, decreasing of soil water holding capacity had the highest direct positive effect (0.269) on yield gap followed by imbalanced fertilizer use (0.234), longer duration variety (0.191), inadequate knowledge on modern seedling raising (0.170), difficulties in getting credit (0.139), lack of threshing and storing facilities (0.135), higher fertilizer consumption (0.129), high cost of labourer (0.110), use of older seedling (0.109) and uncertainty of irrigation water (0.107). However, fake fertilizer (-0.251) and non-response of urea (- 0.147) had the negative direct effect on yield gap.