Sarmah, JulianaSACHAN, DIVYA2023-12-112023-12-112022https://krishikosh.egranth.ac.in/handle/1/5810202666Rural women play an important role in both household and socio economic development of the society. Development of any nation will be impossible without developing this important and substantial segment of our society. Women perform a perceptible role in a variety of agricultural operations. They are actively involved in the cultivation of various crops, as well as vegetable production and kitchen gardening. Realizing the importance of rural women in vegetable production and knowing the extent of training needs of these rural women, the study entitled ―Empowerment of rural women in vegetable production for nutritional security‖ was planned with following objectives: To study the work profile of rural women in homestead gardening. To assess the existing knowledge and practice of rural women on vegetable production. To empower rural women in vegetable production through intervention and assess its impact. The present study was conducted in Jorhat district of Assam state. From Jorhat sub-division three blocks namely Kaliapani, Dhekorgorah and Chipahikhola were selected for the study. From each block three villages were selected and from each village 50 respondents were selected by simple random sampling method who were involved in vegetable production activities. Thus all total four hundred fifty (450) rural women from nine villages were the respondents for the present study. The study revealed that majority of the rural women were of middle age group (58.22%), married (91.55%), educated up to middle school level (31.56%) belonged to OBC/MOBC category (73.77%) had nuclear type of family (80.23 %), were having farming as their main occupation (38.89%), had agricultural land 1-3 bigha (38.00%) majority of them had pucca house (48.22%). More than 69 per cent had medium socio-economic status. All the respondents were using biocompost as their main source of fertilizer, had poor contact with extension personnel, lack of time due to over burden of household work was the main problem faced by the respondents in attending training programme. Majority (63.77%) of the respondents had medium level of participation in different activities of production of vegetable crops, had medium level of participation in decision-making (64.22%). Majority (76.00%) of the respondents had medium level of knowledge about vegetable production. The percentage of respondents belonging to the low category of knowledge was higher (21.55%) in the area of land preparation in comparison to other aspects of vegetable production. In case of practice, majority (64.89%) of the respondents had to moderate level of practice regarding vegetable production and 31.33 percent had poor level of practice in plant protection. Selection of respondents for the intervention programme was done from that block where percentage of respondents belonging to lower level of existing knowledge in vegetable production was found more. After intervention gain in knowledge score was 29.34. The impact of intervention programme was found to be highly significant (tvalue- 46.56**) in terms of gain in knowledge. Data regarding existing practices and adoption of practices shows an increase in adoption of practices score (11.57) after 30 days of intervention programme and there was also a highly significant difference between pre exposure practice score and post exposure practice score. Keywords: Empowerment, Rural women, vegetable production, Nutritional Security, knowledge and practice etc.EnglishThesis