Adoption of indigenous paddy cultivation practices by tribal farmers of Tamil Nadu
Indigenous Tribal Agricultural Practices (ITAPs) have facilitated intensive farming for a long period of time without significant deterioration of land or decline in crop production. The tribes of the Kolli hills of Namakkal district in Tamil Nadu possessed rich tradition, heritage and experience in agriculture. Their rich wisdom in ITAPs can effectively be utilized for sustainable agricultural development of tribal areas by appropriately blending the ITAPs with recommended production technological package. In this context, a study was done for collecting, classifying, documenting, analyzing the rationality, and studying the adoption of the selected ITAPs in low land paddy. About 65 ITAPs on low land paddy, in different clusters of villages of Kolli hills were documented.