INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNOLOGY 3(2+1)

Lesson 8 : Individual Contact Methods

Adaptive or Minikit Trail

Adaptive or minikit trail is a method of determining the suitability or otherwise of a new practice in farmer’s situation

Objectives or purposes:

1. To test a new and promising practice under the resources, constraints and abilities of the farmer
2. To find out the benefits of the new practice in comparison to the existing one
3. To build up confidence of the extension agents, research workers and farmers
4. To act as a precaution against insignificant, faulty or hasty recommendations

Principles or Procedure to be followed:

1. Determine the need for arranging the observation plot i.e. whether there is a need for undertaking the trial, taking local conditions into consideration
2. Be clear about the specific purpose of the trial
3. Select about six representative centers in your jurisdiction for conducting the trial
4. In these centers, select the co-operators in consultation with the local farmers
5. It is desirable to select as co-operators for this purpose, such as farmers who have confidence in extension and who also can afford to take the risk of possible failures
6. Select in the co-operator’s holding an average field, representative of the tract and also easily accessible
7. Make it clear to the co-operator and to the other farmers that is a trial or a rough and ready experiment only and not a demonstration plot
8. It is important that all operations are done under the personal supervision of the extension worker
9. Restrict the size of the ‘control’ and ‘treated’ strips to the minimum possible, so as to have a large number of replications
10. Visit the plot as frequently as possible and record on the spot, your observations regarding the relative performance of ‘control’ and ‘treatment’ .
11. Accurate records should be maintained, showing the dates of important operations and other relevant observations.
12. The average performance if the new practice should be observed for at least three seasons consecutively, before you think of recommending it for large scale adoption

Advantages:

• Avoids the pitfalls of hasty recommendation or adoption of new practices
• Constitute the first step towards the spread of a new practice after through testing
• Obviates the technicalities, difficulties and delays involved in laying out regular trial plots, and analyzing the results statistically
• Builds confidence of the extension and research workers on the one hand and of the farmers on the other, in the utility and feasibility of a new practice.

Limitations

1. Being scattered, the trails may suffer from lack of adequate supervision of the extension agent
2. Satisfactory results depend on the clarity of objective and careful selection of the practice and the farmers
3. Difficult to serve suitable co-operators sometimes
4. Risk of failure of a new practice resulting in financial loss to the co-operating farmer
5. Conclusions may not always be unassailable because of the lack of statistical analysis of the data.