SATYANARAYANA, CHVENKATESWARLU, M2017-02-042017-02-041992http://krishikosh.egranth.ac.in/handle/1/5810000169Betelvine is an important horticultural cum commercial crop grown in India in an area of 40,000 hectares. It occupies about 2,626 hectares in Andhra Pradesh. In recent years betelvine cultivators have been facing many technical problems and not getting yields upto potential level. This was mostly due to the fact that betelvine is being mostly grown in a tr ditonal way by the majority of farmers, but success of betelvine cultivation depends on the knowledge and adoption of recommended package of practices. On the other hand, a large part of gains from new farming technologies are still remaining unrealised due to many constraints. These constraints in turn handicap the farmers to exploit the potential of advocated technology in the field, to increase yields. Betelvine farming is an economic activity which involves knowledge, skills and favourable attitude in applying the technology for higher production. Duly keeping in view the problems of betelvine cultivation, this study was taken, to study the knowledge, adoption, technological gap in adoption and yields of betelvine cultivators and constraints in adoption of improved technology of betel vine production. An ex-post facto research design was adopted for the study. Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh was purposively selected. A total of nine villages were selected at random from three selected mandals and one hundred and twenty respondents were selected based on proportionate random sampling. A pre-tested interview schedule with suitable measurement devices of all variables was used for collection of data. The data thus collected was coded and analysed. Majority of the respondents belonged to middle age group ard had education upto primary school level with small landholdings, had medium extension contact, mass media exposure and information seeking behaviour, also had medium social participation, urban contact and scientific orientation with medium income. Majority of the respondents had medium· level of knowledge on recommended package of practices of betelvine. Item analysis revealed that majority of the respondents had no knowledge on the practices like selection of soils, application of manures and fertilisers, packing of leaves and plant protection measures. Majority of the farmers were medium adopters of recommended package of practices of b~telvine. Item analysis revealed that the practices like soil testing, application of manures and fertilisers·, improved methods of packing of leaves and control methods for wilt disease were not adopted by the majority of the farmers. It refers that these practices have maximum technological gap in adoption. The study also revealed that majority of the betelvine cultivators getting average yields. Correlation analysis of independent variables with dependent variables i.e., knowledge, adoption, technological gap and yield indicated that education, extension contact, mass media exposure, information seeking behaviour, social participation, urban contact and scientific orientation had a positive and significant relationship. Whereas, age was negatively significant. On the other hand, farm size and income showed non-significant relationship with knowledge, adoption and yields. Technological gap in adoption had shown opposite relationship with independent variables. Majority of the farmers reported that unawareness of the practice, lack of technical guidance, high cost of labour, unavailability of labour in time, untimely rains and unfavourable weather conditions as constraints in adoption of recommended practices of betelvine. Farmers had also given suggestions to increase the yields of betelvine.ennullThesis