Matrix Ranking- An important PRA tool to assess farmers preferences and priorities

Matrix ranking is an important PRA tool to assess and study the preferences of farmers for a particular technology over others, with respect to crop or animal based technologies. The preferences and criteria for the same are also studied in the process. The following study gives a first-hand idea of farmers’ relative preferences for different varieties of rice, mustard, tomato, chilli, garden pea, fish and lac hosts. The results of the matrix ranking for different varieties of rice revealed that, the variety “Arize 6444” was the most preferred one followed by “Abhishek”. “Pusa Mahak” was the leading variety of mustard followed by Pusa Bold. Swarna Sampada is more preferred tomato variety among the farmers. Among fish, “Rohu” was widely preferred by the respondents due to its higher yield, more market demand, resistance to water quality and higher market price.