ABSTRACT

The study focused on identifying the technical know-how needed by farmers for commercial production of mungbean in Abia state. Four research questions were raised and four hypotheses formulated for the study. Descriptive survey research design was used for the study. The population of the study was all the 283 respondents involved in mungbean production in Abia state made up of 260 Abia State Agricultural Development Programme (ADP) extension agents and 23 lecturers of the Department of Crop Science (Agronomy), Michael Okpara University of Agriculture Umudike. A total sampling technique was used for the study and all the entire population (283) respondents were used as sample size. A questionnaire titled: “the technical know-how needed for production of mungbean (TKNPM)” was structured by the researcher and used for data collection. The instrument was validated by three validates. Cronbach Alpha reliability method was used to determine the internal consistency of the questionnaire items on planning, field operations, processing and storage, and marketing of commercial production of mungbean which yielded 0.83 cronbach alpha coefficient. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics of mean, percentage and standard deviation to answer the research questions while t-test was used to test the hypotheses. It was found that all the seventy (76) items made up of 17 items in planning, 24 items in field operations, 17 items in processing and storage, and 18 items in marketing are the technical know-how needed by farmers for commercial production of mungbean in Abia state. It is recommended among others that the Abia State government should direct the education administrators of tertiary institutions in Abia state and Abia State ADP to package the identified technical know-how needed by farmers for commercial production of mungbean in Abia state into a training manual or programme use to train the farmers. That the identified and packaged training manual or programme (technical know-how in planning, field operations, processing and storage, and marketing) in mungbean production should be integrated into the programme of Abia State agricultural Development Programme (ADP) and utilized for training and retraining of farmers by extension agents to enable the farmers acquire and improve their techniques in mungbean production thereby earning higher income from mungbean production.