Increasing the capacity and adoption of certified citrus seedling producers towards recommended technology for disease-free certified citrus seedling production in Sambas Regency, West Kalimantan

Citrus nursery is one of the upstream sectors that is significant to support citrus agribusiness in Sambas regency as citrus production center area in West Kalimantan. Several programs have been conducted to increase the capacity and technology adoption of disease-free certified citrus seedling producers. Therefore, the objective of this study was to examine the implementation of technology support for disease-free certified citrus grafted seedling production through mentoring programs to increase the knowledge and skill capacity of the seedling producers, as well as to evaluate the adoption level of the certified citrus seedling producers towards the recommended technology for disease-free certified citrus seedling production in Sambas Regency. The mentoring programs were carried out by training and establishing a model of citrus Bud-stick Multiplication Block. The evaluation of the adoption level of recommended technology was carried out by conducting surveys before and after the mentoring programs. The adoption evaluation of the recommended technology components comprised of the use of polybags during the whole production process, sowing rootstock seeds correctly, nucellar selection, transplanting, the use of bud-stick from Bud-stick Multiplication Block, Grafting and optimum maintenance. The evaluation results indicated that several technology components got an increase in the adoption rates after the completion of the mentoring programs. However, there were still few technology components that did not experience changes in the rate of adoption.