On Farm Research is a set of procedures for adaptive research whose purpose is to develop recommendations for representative groups of farmers. In On-farm research, farmers participate in identifying problems and its priorities, managing experiment and evaluating results. On-farm research, therefore, is an adaptive research with farmers perspectives. The objectives of On-farm research is to identify existing inputs or practices that might help to solve major problems of many farmers in a defined study area.
The procedure of On-farm research has five steps viz.,
- Diagnosis
- Planning
- Experimentation
- Assessment / Evaluation of results
- Recommendation and diffusion
More than four hundred technologies were assessed on different thematic areas of resource management, crop production including field and horticultural crops, and livestock by KVKs. The trials conducted on participatory mode on around 4000 farmers’ fields during last years. Further, the suitable technologies identified by the Scientists and farmers were taken in the FLD programmes for their wider acceptability and horizontal expansion.
