International Journal of Agriculture Extension and Social Development

Agricultural input dealers serve as key intermediaries in disseminating knowledge and practices related to Integrated Nutrient Management (INM) to farmers. Conduct of INM Training programmes plays a major role in improving the knowledge and skill of input dealers about INM thereby creating a significant change in creating a favourable attitude among them for encouraging farmers to adopt INM. This study assessed the effectiveness of INM training programmes conducted for 90 input dealers across three 15-day training sessions at the College of Agriculture, Padannakkad under Kerala Agricultural University. A pre-post evaluation design was employed, using a pretested 30-item questionnaire covering soil fertility, organic manure management, fertilizer use efficiency, nutrient cycling, and integrated approaches. The results revealed significant knowledge gains post-training, with overall improvement of 116.9%, and topic-wise improvements ranging from 92.6% to 264%, indicating substantial enhancement in participants’ understanding, particularly in integrated approaches and nutrient cycling. Correlation analysis showed that younger participants and those with higher education levels gained more knowledge, while participants with lower pre-training scores exhibited the largest gains. ANOVA and Tukey’s post-hoc analysis confirmed that educational background significantly influenced knowledge gain. Participant feedback indicated high satisfaction with content relevance, methodology, resource persons, and training duration. The findings demonstrate that structured, interactive, and comprehensive training effectively enhances the knowledge of input dealers, reinforcing their capacity to promote sustainable nutrient management practices among farmers.