International Journal of Horticulture, 2024, Vol.14, No.2, 44-58 http://hortherbpublisher.com/index.php/ijh 48 method followed is to successively add the net returns from each production year until the investments are completely recovered. Since the cash flows are not uniform, the payback period was calculated by successively reducing the net cash flows from outstanding investments. 2.4 Analysis of market margin and producer share Prevailing marketing practices and marketing channels were studied for estimating the marketing margin and producer share of apple produced in the study area. Marketing margin was calculated as follows: Marketing margin = Retail price (Pr) - Farm gate price (Pf) Producer share (Ps) = (Pf + Pr) × 100% 2.5 Indexing Problems related to production and marketing alone were ranked with the use of the index. Scaling techniques, which provide the direction and extremity attitude of the respondent towards any preposition (Miah, 1993) were used to construct an index. The intensity of production and marketing problems being faced by apple producers was identified by using five five-point scaling techniques comparing the most severe, most serious, moderate problems, low problem, and least problems using scores of 1.0, 0.8, 0.6, 0.4, and 0.2. The index for the intensity of production and marketing problems faced by respondents was computed by using the formula: IS= 푆� � /� Where, IS = index value for intensity of problems; S = Scale value for ith intensity; Fi = frequency of ith response; N = total number of respondents 2.6 SWOT analysis of apple production in Kalikot district SWOT stands for Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, and Threat. Strength and weakness are the internal factors, whereas opportunity and threats are the external factors affecting Apple production. The strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of apple production in Kalikot districts were analyzed to track the potentiality of adopting an apple production system in the Kalikot district. 3 Results and Discussion 3.1 Socio-economic and demographic characteristics of the respondents 3.1.1 Gender distribution of respondents of the surveyed area The total sampled population was 78. Out of the total sample, 83.3% of the respondents were male and only 16.7% were female (Table 1). This revealed that most of the households had males as decision-makers. Moreover, it also shows that most of the males are involved in apple farming compared to females. Table 1 Distribution of respondents of the sampled household by gender in Kalikot Gender of Respondent Frequency Percentage (%) Male 65 83.3 Female 13 16.6 Total 78 100 Source: Field survey, 2023 3.1.2 Age of respondents The mean and standard deviation of the age of the respondents in the surveyed area were found to be 47.5 and 11.805, 51 respectively. The respondents were within the range of 27 to 72 years (Table 2). The age of respondents was categorized into three categories: < 40 years, 40 to 60 years, and > 60 years (Figure 1). The age distribution of respondents revealed that the majority of the respondents (53.8) were between the age ranges of 40 to 60 years, 33.3% of the respondents were below 40 years of age and 12.8 % were above 60 years of age.
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