Abstract

Haroon Raza, Afaq Patel and Qadri Ahmed

Professionally competent Agriculture Officers (AOs) play an important role in increasing the agriculture production through communicating new findings about the damage caused by weed. It has been tried to find the professional competency of AOs to cope with the weed problem in North West Frontier Province (NWFP), Pakistan. This study was initiated during in January, 2007 where 112 questionnaires were distributed among the AOs across all 24 districts of NWFP. One hundred and eleven AOs returned the questionnaires and the data were analyzed using SPSS version 16. The analysis revealed that all the officers had basic understanding of weed science. However; 7% of AOs had the required knowledge related to weeds. Majority of the respondents were not in a position to point out the weeds of major and minor crops. Same was the case regarding lack of farmers’ guidance in herbicide application. About 95% respondents rated weed science related knowledge from important to very important. The present findings recommends that the AOs are supposed to be trained in weed related problems, so that they can cope with the weed management problem of the farming community, for the increase of the q