Assessment of varietal traits for price differentials of pigeon pea in Karnataka

The pulses occupy vital position in dry land agriculture due to its protein content apart from high value and low input requirement for production, due to this; pulses are called as ‘poor man's meat and rich man's vegetable. The per capita availability of pulses is influenced by price policies and area under cultivation. To explore trends in the pigeon pea with respect toarea, production, productivity and also to examine adoption pattern of different varieties of pigeon pea and also to identify the factors responsible for price differentials of pigeon pea were carried out in the Gulbarga district of Karnataka state. The primary and secondary data was used for the study by using pre-tested structured questionnaire for the period of 2013–2014 and random sampling technique was employed for selecting 150 sample respondents during the study period. The results reveal that positive growth in area was (37.20 per cent) observed in Gulbarga district when compared to Karnataka state as a whole. Further the study also focused on perceived varietal attributes among pigeon pea growers, the findings revealed that varietal attributes such as high yielding, ability to earn premium price and pest resistance, good taste for TS-3R, Maruthi and Gulyal varieties were the major attributes perceived by the farmers. The findings on preferred varietal traits in pigeon pea related to marketing aspects the study reveals that high demand varieties, fetching higher price and bigger grain size were the factors responsible for adoption of pigeon pea crop. Hence the study suggest that government intervention should be made in order to supplement with Minimum Support Price (MSP) and also to regulate the appropriate marketing policy to develop the farmer-consumer required traits through improved breeding programmes especially for dry land areas of Karnataka.