Devarani, LoukhamS. S. P., Jyothi2023-02-012023-02-012019-09https://krishikosh.egranth.ac.in/handle/1/5810193015Rice is the major staple food crop of India and specifically, North East India which was reported as the secondary centre of origin of rice. However as per the five year data provided by Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare for 2017-18, the entire NER contributed only 7.8 percent of the area and 6.8 percent of the production in the country which was very negligible. The food security of the region is reliant on the extent of cultivation of promising and high yielding varieties by the farmers. The Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare and State Agricultural Departments are exerting concerted efforts in developing and diffusing High Yielding Varieties among the farmers despite which the rate of success is very negligible. Institutes such as the ICAR-NEH, the Central Agricultural University and the respective State Departments of Agriculture have developed certain HYVs of Rice and disseminated for over a decade among the farmers. The Central Agricultural University, Imphal has developed CAU-R series varieties among which the CAUR1 (Tamphaphou) was widely disseminated since 2009 among the North Eastern States and specifically in Manipur. Studies on the varietal performance at the farm level have been done but farmers’ perception, diffusion of the variety through farmer networks and stakeholder integration has not been carried out. To better understand about the technological innovation system of the CAU-R series varieties especially CAU-R1, the study was conducted in the state of Manipur with the following objectives viz., to identify the key stakeholders and understand their roles and interrelationships, to map the social networks of the farmers and assess their degree of participation, to study the effect of the independent variables on the social network properties and to identify the constraints faced by the stakeholders and the farmers. Mixed method research design and purposive sampling technique were used and 20 stakeholder categories and 216 farmers across three districts viz., Imphal East, Thoubal and Bishnupur in Manipur were selected for the study. Descriptive statistics like frequencies, percentage, mean, standard deviation and correlation were used while for mapping the farmer networks, UCINET software was used. The Garett Ranking technique was used to identify and prioritise the constraints. The study revealed that majority of the stakeholders belonged to the public or government organizations followed by farmer cooperatives and media. 89.41 percent of the stakeholders reported CAU, Imphal as the major source of information regarding CAU-R1 followed by the Department of Agriculture, Manipur. Market demand for the CAU-R1 variety at the local and regional level was extremely low. Strong linkages were primarily between the same type of organizations across different administrative levels. Institutional stakeholders had comparatively effective linkages among themselves than with the farmers and their collectives and vice versa. The CAU, Department of Agriculture Manipur, KVK Andro, KVK Thoubal and the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare showed high interest and power in the diffusion of the variety while the farmers and their collectives in the three districts had high interest but low power. 50 percent of the farmers had replaced the variety with other local and ICAR RCM series of paddy varieties due to less taste and low market demand. The Network density across the three districts was very low indicating loose connections and was homophilous in nature with low level of cosmopoliteness of the farmers. The average in-degree and outdegree across the three districts was 5 and the network degree centralization and network betweenness centralization scores were very low indicating the dominance of very few influential actors in the network while majority of them were mere numbers. The social participation was found to be positively correlated and the time taken for adoption negatively at 1 percent LOS with the degree, closeness and centrality measures. The number of trainings attended is positively correlated with the degree centrality at 1 percent level of significance and negatively correlated with closeness at 5 percent level of significance. Major constraints reported were lack of coordination between stakeholders and inadequate knowledge on the recommended package of practices of the variety. Interventions to increase the marketability of the variety and improve linkage of farmers with institutional stakeholders are recommended.EnglishDiffusion of informationAgricultural developmentThesis