Major problems encountered by the coconut growers who visit coconut technology park of coconut research institute of Sri Lanka

The study was carried out to identify and rank the main problems of the growers who visit Coconut Technology Park of the Coconut Research Institute of Sri Lanka. Two questionnaires were used to collect data. First questionnaire was to identify the growers main problems and the second was to assess the intensity of the identified problems. The survey was carried out during the months June to November 2011. For the data collection, 153 respondents who visited Coconut Technology Park were randomly selected. The severity of the problems was estimated by developing average problem score. The study reveals that growers’ were confronted with four critical problems. The most critical problem was lack of seedlings, followed by pest damage, farm gate nut price and access to technology. Amongst the identified problems, the “access to technology” has become a problem only to part-time growers, which implies that there is a necessacity of an extension approach that can cater to the part time growers who do not find sufficient time to spend on coconut cultivation. The cyber extension or internet based extension may be a future solution to cater the part-time growers. COCOS Vol. 20: 1-8 (2013