Awareness, Perception and Buying Behavior on Tissue Cultured Banana Saba Plantlets among Farmers in Batangas

Date

5-2019

Degree

Bachelor of Science in Agribusiness Management

College

College of Economics and Management (CEM)

Adviser/Committee Chair

Arlene C. Gutierrez

Abstract

Tissue cultured plantlets have been the most innovative advances in agriculture. It has solved a lot of the farmers’ problems with their supply of plantlets since tissue cultured plantlets can be reproduced through mass propagation. The advantages of tissue cultured plantlets over traditionally grown plantlets are: 1) mass propagation solves the insufficient supply for agricultural input, 2) disease-free that solves the disease outbreak in farmers’ crops and 3) adopt desirable qualities of a mother plant. Banana commodity has been suffering from these kind of problems that could be partially solved by tissue cultured plantlets. For the banana industry, farmers do not have enough accessibility, lack of tangible nurseries that produce tissue cultures and financial capability to use tissue cultured banana plantlets. Most of the banana farmers resort to using suckers from the previous crop cycle from which leads to disease outbreak and later, leads to high mortality rate and low yield rate.

A study on the awareness, perception and buying behavior on tissue cultured banana saba plantlets among farmers in Batangas was conducted. More specifically, the objectives of the study were to: 1) Present the demographic profile and farm profile of banana farmers; 2) describe the buying behavior of tissue culture users and non- tissue culture users; 3) determine the level of awareness and perception of farmers towards tissue cultured banana plantlets; 4) assess the factors affecting their awareness and perception; 5) identify and analyze the problems and issues; 6) provide recommendations based on the findings of the study. Primary and secondary data were used in the study. Data were gathered through personal interviews with the 60 respondents from top banana producing municipalities in Batangas. Respondents were chosen through purposive sampling method. The respondents were asked to rate Likert – scale on their quality and price perceptions on tissue cultured banana saba plantlets based from the product description and prior knowledge. Mean, percentages, mode, frequency count were also used to interpret the data collected from the respondents. As most of the information were qualitative in nature, descriptive analysis were used in the study.

The factors that influence the engagement on tissue culture among banana farmers in Batangas were: 1) the proximity of the municipality to the supplier of tissue culture supply, 2) the level of household income, 3) being part of an organization of banana growers in Batangas 4) the retail price of tissue cultured banana, 6) the availability of the supply of the institution is one of the key factors influencing the engagement on tissue culture among tissue culture, 7) the perception of the respondents on their current banana, 8) availability of supply, 9) tangible suppliers and 10) problems encountered by the non-tissue culture 11) the source of information is a large factor that contributes to the level of awareness of the banana farmers. Overall, the farmers have positive perception on tissue culture because of the prior knowledge for the whole respondents and experience for the tissue culture users.

The study recommends the STIARC to outsource from commercially owned nurseries and supply free or subsidized plantlets to the non-tissue culture users. In addition, MAO could help finding affordable and tangible tissue culture suppliers for their respective municipality. Commercially owned nurseries have the opportunity to enter the market in Batangas banana farmers that could address the lack of supply and widen the market reach of the nursery. Lastly, recommendation for further studies such as the market potential of commercial tissue cultured plantlets could be done in the future.

Language

English

LC Subject

Banana industry, Plant tissue culture, Banana growers

Location

UPLB College of Economics and Management (CEM)

Call Number

LG 993 2019 M17 K34

Notes

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Document Type

Thesis

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