On Farm Testing (OFT)

On Farm Testing (OFT) is to test and evaluate the research finding of Research Stations at the farmer’s field and to refine and modify the technologies, if required for better adoption by farmers.  It is confirmation of already proven research results under real farming situation.  Based on the background information that the farmers do not adopt about 70% of the available technologies and hence it becomes necessary to take up famer participatory testing of research findings in their own farms.  Apart, from convincing them, an opportunity given to refine or modify the recommendations to suite the requirements of the farmers in a given farming situations. Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) was conducted to identify the problems faced by the farmers. Based on the priority of the problems, OFTs were implemented. Economically viable, operationally feasible technologies matching with farmers needs are identified to solve the problem faced by them.

           On farm testing improves reliability of crop management decisions.  The objective of an on-farm test is to determine how different management options perform compared to each other under same environment and cropping system.  The key to an on-farm test is that it must make repeated and unbiased side-by-side comparisons are called replications.  With replications, we can use simple statistical formulas to decide if one practice or “treatment” differs enough from the other to be sure the difference was not due to change.