Sanusi Mohammed Kabiru^1,, Omokhudu Collins Abiodun¹, Bello Oladele Gafaru², Yahaya Sadiq Abdulrahman¹

Despite the comparative advantages that Nigeria has in the production of Date palm, the production is still low. It is on this backdrop, that an assessment of the knowledge level of date palm farmers in the country particularly Dutse Local Government Area of Jigawa State, Nigeria was embarked on to know their knowledge level in order to develop an appropriate technology for the date palm industry in the country that will bring about increase in production. Multi-stage sampling techniques were used to select one hundred fifteen respondents for the study. The study revealed that Date palm farmers in the study area were in the age bracket of between 41-50 years with a mean of 53.1. All the farmers (100.0%) were male and were of the Islamic faith. The average household size is 10 person/ household. Many of the farmers (52.2%) had no formal education and had put up between 1-20 years of farming. The sources of knowledge on date palm practices were from friends and relatives and they fell into the moderate category of knowledge level of 14.3-18.8.The test of relationship shows that education (X²=22.313; p<0.05) and farm size (r=0.223; p<0.05) are significant with the knowledge level. Research should be emphasized in the area of processing and value addition on the fruits to stimulate production. The extension system in the date palm growing areas should be strengthened to include date palm component in their mandate and the farmers’ group meetings should be used to disseminate date palm technology.

date palm, knowledge level, assessment, value addition, production, date palm technology