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The study examined the discontinuance of Yam Minisett Technology (YMT) utilization by yam farmers in North-central Nigeria. Simple random sampling technique was used to select 150 respondents. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse data collected. Findings showed that majority of the respondents were males (94.7%), married (75.3%), no formal education (60.0%), no secondary occupation (74.7%), mean age (42.5 ± 47) and household size (5.7 ± 1.8) and small farm size (48.0%). Discontinued package of the innovation include: sole cropping system (37.3%), seed treatment with minisett dust (30.7%), pre-sprouting (28.0%) and staking using pyramid or trellis (26.7%). Reasons for discontinued utilisation are poor input supply and accessibility (86.7%), poor farm financing (82.0%), poor extension services (visit and follow-up) (74.7%) and poor farm labour supply (68.0%). PPMC result shows significant relationship (r = -0.895, p = 0.000) between farmers socio-economic characteristics and YMT discontinuance, and T-test statistics at 0.01 level of significance indicated that the output of farmers who discontinued are significantly less (3.68) than farmers who continued to utilize YMT. It was thus concluded that discontinued utilisation of YMT could lead to significant decline in seed-yam production, farm size and income of farmers. Therefore continuous utilisation of YMT is recommended with appropriate input supply, provision of interest free farm credit, improve extension-farmers contact, and development of YMT to thrive under mixed cropping.

Keywords: Discontinuance, minisett, technology, utilization.

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Citation: Oluyomi SM, Audu LB, Adah OC (2016). Discontinuance of Yam Minisett Technology (YMT) utilisation by farmers in Benue State, Nigeria. J. Agric. Crop Res. 4(6): 83-90.