Author(s): YARRAKULA MAHESH BABU, S. S. DANA AND H. K. DE

Abstract: Aquaculture is recognized as the best alternative to meet the world’s protein demand. Constant growth of aquaculture production in recent years would contribute to reducing the fishing pressure on natural fish stock. But, due to diseases and poor farm management by the farmers resulted low production at farmers’ door. So, knowledge about Better Management Practices (BMPs) is a prerequisite for prevention of outbreak of diseases and to get better yield. Keeping these facts in mind this study was conducted to find out the factors influencing the knowledge level of shrimp farmers about Better Management Practices. This study was conducted in the predominant shrimp farming district i.e. Nellore district of Andhra Pradesh. A total of 150 shrimp farmers were selected from the district by using simple random sampling technique. The data were collected with the help of structured interview schedule. The study revealed that over half of the respondents had medium level of knowledge about BMPs in Vannamei culture followed by 24.67 per cent had medium level of knowledge and only 23.33 per cent had high level of knowledge. Correlation analysis revealed that, education, farming experience, annual income, annual expenditure, land holding, ownership, material possession, social participation, mass media participation, cosmo politeness, extension agency contact, innovative proneness, credit orientation, value orientation, risk orientation, economic motivation were significantly correlated with the knowledge level of respondents (P<0.01). Multiple regression analysis showed that four variables namely farming experience, mass media exposure, extension agency contact and land holding were significantly influenced variation in knowledge level of farmers and they contributed 82 per cent variation in explaining the variability in the knowledge level of the shrimp farmers towards the better management practices.

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