تأثير مصادر المعلومات و الخدمات الإرشادية الزراعية على إنتاجية التين بمنطقة جيزان، المملكة العربية السعودية

Abstract EN

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of both agricultural information sources and extension services on fig production in Gizan Area-Saudi Arabia.

A questionnaire was designed for collecting data from 100 randomly selected growers using a personal interview method.

The results revealed that 89% of the examined growers obtained different academic degrees and this was reflected on their dependence on television and radio agricultural programs as the first sources of information.

It was found that the majority of the examined growers (86%) worked with the agricultural workers in the farms because 99% of the examined growers used agriculture as a second job.

The results showed that 98% of the examined growers used spacing of 5x5 m for planting fig trees, 79% of them applied NPK for fertilizing the trees and 46% of them used drip irrigation method.

As a result of adopting these agricultural practices, 45% of the examined growers obtained 10-30 Kg of fig fruits/tree.

The results, also, showed that 57% of the examined growers were visited by agriculture extension agents, 17.5% of them were totally benefited from the visits while 78.9% of them were partially benefited from such visits.

The results demonstrated that among the pests which attack fig trees, termites were distributed widely followed by fruit fly and then fig fruit-fly.

The results revealed that in spite of the interest and the field visits of the extension agents to the growers and the distribution of the extension handouts and pamphlets regarding fig production, the extension agents didn’t care much about conveying the problems facing the growers to the research stations, and, also, they didn’t inform the growers about the most recent methods used for fig production.

These activities might have a passive effect on the reduction of the annual income from fig production among the examined growers compared to the annual income from other crops.

This passive effect might, also, be due to the number of years of experience in fig production, which were 7.19 compared to 19.84 for other crops.

By using factor analysis of sources by which the growers obtained the agricultural information, three factors came out, namely local extension sources, training and visit extension sources and informative extension sources.

Two factors for agricultural activities and sources came out; the first one was called the applied agricultural extension services & the other was the educational extension services.