Author:
Aastha Gautam, Chandan Bhattarai, Rita Khadka, Dija Bhandari, Rajendra Regmi

Doi: 10.26480/fabm.01.2020.01.04

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License CC BY 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Questionnaire based field survey was conducted with the purpose to access the production and market situation of mandarin orange among 120 farmers in Gulmi district. For the ease of the study, the sampled farmers were categorized according to their orchard land holding into small holders and commercial producers respectively. The average production of mandarin for smallholders and commercial producers were 0.987 tons and 3.645tons with productivity of 7.45 t/ha and 9.66 t/ha respectively. The average variable cost of production for small holder growers was found higher with NRs. 385581.16/ha. However, gross margin and B: C ratio was found higher in commercial producers which were NRs. 388040.43/ha and 2.59 respectively. Cobb-Douglas production function was used for the analysis of factor of production which showed human labor, irrigation cost, manure cost and transport cost was significant contributor in the return of mandarin. Pre-harvest contract was the most common marketing pattern with 60% of the producers following producer to contractor channel. The major production and marketing problems were lack of irrigation, lack of quality sapling, fruit drop. Low price offered to farmers, lack of processing activities and technical constraints in the study area.