International Journal of Agriculture Extension and Social Development

The present study on “Adoption gap in soybean cultivation” was conducted in the Akola, Murtijapur and Barshitakli taluka of Akola district of Maharashtra state. The exploratory design of social research was used for the study. Total 150 soybean growers were selected as sample for study by stratified sampling method. The data were collected by conducting personal interview of each soybean growers with help of structured interview schedule. Careful analysis, tabulation and classification of the data were done. The findings of independent variable show that, it is concluded that, 38.67 per cent of the soybean growers had belong to middle age group. 38.70 per cent of soybean growers had completed secondary school. The distribution pertaining to land holding indicates that 40.00 per cent of soybean growers had semi- medium type of land holding of 2 to 4 ha. In case of farming experience, 45.33 per cent of soybean growers had more 20 years for farming experience. 34.66 per cent of the soybean growers had Rs. 50001-1,00,000 annual income. They had medium source of information 83.33 per cent. 38.00 per cent had no source of irrigation for cultivation. In case of psychological variable, they had medium innovativeness and risk orientation it has found to be 72.00 per cent and 74.70 per cent respectively and 43.33 per cent of soybean growers had low social participation. Most important independent variable among the soybean growers is knowledge which had been found to be medium i.e. 65.33 per cent

Among the selected independent variables for study namely age, education, land holding, annual income, area under soybean cultivation, source of irrigation, farming experience, source of information, social participation, innovativeness, risk orientation were found to be negatively non - significant with adoption gap and knowledge only had highly negative significant relationship with adoption gap at 0.01 level of probability therefore the null hypothesis were rejected for knowledge, While other rest above mentioned variables did not show any significant association with the adoption gap, therefore the null hypothesis was accepted for these variables.