International Journal of Horticulture, 2024, Vol.14, No.1, 18-30 http://hortherbpublisher.com/index.php/ijh 18 Research Article Open Access Awareness and Adoption Status of Good Agricultural Practices in Mandarin (Citrus reticulataBlanco.) among Farmers of Syangja, Nepal Nirajan Acharya1, Karishma Bhusal 1 , Kalika Bahadur Adhikari 2, Prashanna Acharya 1, Shashi Pandey1, Dharma Prasad Chapai 1 1 Faculty of Agriculture, Agriculture and Forestry University, Rampur, Chitwan, 44209, Nepal 2 Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness Management, Agriculture and Forestry University, Rampur, Chitwan, 44209, Nepal Corresponding email: karishmabhusal09@gmail.com International Journal of Horticulture, 2024, Vol.14, No.1 doi: 10.5376/ijh.2024.14.0003 Received: 11 Feb., 2024 Accepted: 12 Mar., 2024 Published: 22 Mar., 2024 Copyright © 2024 Acharya et al., This is an open-access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Preferred citation for this article: Acharya N., Bhusal K., Adhikari K.B., Acharya P., Pandey S., and Chapai D.P., 2024, Awareness and adoption status of good agricultural practices in mandarin (Citrus reticulata Blanco.) among farmers of Syangja, Nepal, International Journal of Horticulture, 14(1): 18-30 (doi: 10.5376/ijh.2024.14.0003) Abstract Mandarin, as one of the important sub-tropical fruits under citrus species, is a high potential bearing crop in different mid-hill regions of Nepal, mostly Syangja due to climatic and topographical suitability. In addition, the use of scientific cultivation practices determines the production output. The research was designed from February to June 2022, to assess the awareness and adoption status of good agriculture practices among mandarin growers in Syangja, Nepal. The command areas of the Mandarin superzone under PMAMP were purposively selected for this study. The sampling was done by stratified proportionate random method to represent farmers of the Superzone area. Primary data was collected by face-to-face interviews, FGDs, and KII using a pre-tested semi-structured questionnaire from 98 respondents. IBM SPSS Statistics 26 software was used to analyze the data and Descriptive statistics, index values were used to interpret the findings. Findings revealed, that most of the respondents (56.1%) only partially knew about GAP and adoption was also at an early level in many farmers (39.8%). Awareness was found significantly higher (p=0.034) among males than females. Respondents from Putalibazar municipality were likely to be more aware (52) and adopting GAP (48) in Mandarin orchards than the rest of the area. The GAP adoption related to standards of planting material fertilizers, and soil additives was found high among (60.7%) and (51.4%) of the respondents respectively while it was low for the irrigation standards i.e. 12.7% of the total. Citrus fruit fly with an index of (0.94) was the severe pest and the powdery mildew with an index value of (0.91) was the major disease reported in the study area. Also, disease and pest problems were more pronounced as the high-ranked production constraints of Mandarin. Keywords Adoption; GAP; Mandarin; Quality; Standards Introduction Citrus is the major fruit crop grown in Nepal, which occupies 28.19% of the total fruit-growing area (Regmi, 2020). The mid-hill climatic condition of Nepal ranging between 800 to 1,400 m elevation shows suitability for the cultivation of citrus-related species from east to west (Paudel et al., 2022). The most important three species of citriculture in Nepal are mandarin (Citrus reticulata), sweet orange (Citrus sinensis), and lime (Citrus aurantifolia) (Paudyal et al., 2016). Mandarin is cultivated in 27,002 hectares (ha) of land area with annual production and productivity of 198,406 metric tons (mt) and 10.80 mt per hectare respectively which contributes almost 0.85% in AGDP (MoALD, 2021). Syangja is one of the mid-hill districts in Gandaki province with an area of 1,164 km2 (https://lgisnepal.com/en/province/4). About 942 ha of land in Syangja district is utilized for citrus production (PMAMP, PIU, 2076); Mandarin covers an area of 1,969 ha, of which the productive area remains 1,389 ha with a production of 13,800 mt and 10 mt/ha productivity (MoALD, 2021). It is a comparatively advantageous fruit crop in mid-hills than traditional food crops in the aspect of income and profit. However, farmers have faced different production-related problems, disease and pest prevalence, and low net income in Mandarin (Pant et al., 2019). Good agricultural practice is a novel concept and redesigned practice in the Nepalese agricultural system which emphasizes decreasing chemical inputs aiming at the production of healthy outputs (Joshi et al., 2019). It is a collection of principles to apply for on-farm production and post-production processes, resulting in safe and
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