ABSTRACT

The study developed entrepreneurial skill modules required by the agricultural extension agents in training secondary school graduates in garden egg production. Research and development design (R&D) was adopted and the area of the study was Abia State with three agricultural zones namely: Umuahia zone, Ohafia zone and Aba zone. The population for the study was 1500, made up of 1036 crop farmers for the three zones: (328 for Ohafia, 164 for Umuahia and 544 for Aba) and 464 agricultural extension agents. The sample was 306 consisting of 211 garden egg farmers and 95 agricultural extension agents, stratefied proportionate sampling technique was used to sample the crop farmers for the three zones namely:67 farmers for Ohafia, 33 farmers for Umuahia and 111 farmers for Aba. The instrument for data collection was a structured Questionnaire and was subjected to face and content validity along with the modules by three (3) experts each. Cronbach Apha reliability method was used to determine the internal consistency of the questionnaire items and a co-efficient of 0.82 was obtained. Three research assistants helped the researcher to administer the questionnaire to the respondents. Out of the 306 copies of the questionnaire distributed, 298 copies were retrieved and analyzed showing 97% retrieval rate. Data collected were analyzed using mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions while t-test was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The study found out that 8 skills which include: (to enable the graduates become self employed in garden egg production enterprise, to empower the graduates to own and manage any of garden egg enterprises,  to make the graduates become skillful in growing, managing, harvesting and marketing of garden egg, among others ) were relevant as the objectives of garden egg production, 50 skills comprising (9 skills in planning, 15 skills in nursery establishment, 6 skills in transplanting, 5 skills in post planting operations, 5 skills in harvesting and 10 skills in marketing) were required as the content of a training module in the growing of garden egg, 11 skills were required as the instructional material for a training module in garden egg production, 8 skills were relevant as the methods of a training module in garden egg production and 6 skills were required as activities for evaluating a training module in garden egg production. The study found out that there was no significant difference in the mean responses of the two groups of respondents (farmers and extension agents) on the hypotheses tested and therefore recommended that the packaged modules should be utilized by the agricultural extension agents and the skill acquisition center teachers in training secondary school graduates and other interested individuals through small plot techniques in garden egg production enterprise.