Frontline Demonstrations
Frontline demonstration is the new concept or field demonstration evolved by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research with the inception of the Technology Mission on Oilseed Crops during mid-eighties. The field demonstrations conducted under the close supervision of the scientists of the National Agriculture Research System is called frontline demonstrations, because the technologies are demonstrated for the first time by the scientists themselves before being fed into the main extension system of the State Departments of Agriculture.
The main objective of Front-line demonstrations is to demonstrate newly released crop production and protection technologies and its management practices in the farmers' fields under different agro-climatic regions and farming situations. Proven technologies and assessed/refined technologies through OFT are taken under FLD at farmers’ field.
Only critical inputs and training are provided from the scheme budget, remaining inputs arc supplied by the farmers themselves. Training of the farmers associated with the frontline demonstrations is a pre-requisite for conducting such demonstrations. The target audience of frontline demonstrations is both farmers and the extension officers. The purpose is to be convince extension functionaries and farmers together about the potentialities of technologies for further wide scale diffusion.
Besides, special cluster frontline demonstrations (CFLD) are currently conducted in large patches of 20-100 ha in pulses and oilseeds. Our focus is on improving yield of mustard under oilseed and greengram under pulses through these cluster FLDs.