Appraisal of Performance and Economic Benefit of Plant Doctor System in Taiwan

• Main Authors: Chun-Yueh Chen, 陳均岳
• Other Authors: 孫岩章
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/24079291988524687131

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 植物病理與微生物學研究所 === 99 === There’s about 600,000 ha of agricultural land area in Taiwan. Due to the rising of living standards and dramatically decrease of land area, the “Plant doctor” system was proposed to increase the output from existing agricultural land and improve the product quality. Global statistics have shown that the average global crop losses annually due to pathogens, pests and weeds are about 35% in total. The appropriate plant health management in the crop production system can minimize the loss. The plant doctor system had been formally proposed by Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology of NTU in 2005. This project, supported by BAPHIQ and the Bioresource College of NTU, established the “Plant Clinic” and “Plant doctor” system in farmer’s association or local government in Taiwan. In this study, the relation between “performance of plant doctor system” dimension and “supportiveness of farmers or agribusinesses toward plant doctor system” dimension is analyzed, based on a questionnaire with all questions interviewed or suggested by agricultural experts or from literatures. The survey was divided into two types of agriculture, the organic and conventional agriculture. The total effective sample number is 106. The study utilized regression analysis technique to analyze the result and express the correlation between two dimensions. Questionnaire results from both organic and conventional agricultural system showed similar responses toward” innovativeness”, “benefit for raising agricultural product price or value”, and “problem-solving efficient” of current plant doctor system, based on 5-point Likert scale questions. The average values of these responses are 4.4, 4.4, and 4.15, respectively. In addition, the responses of “problem solving rates” are also similar for two type of samples, showing that in average 52% of problems can be solved by plant doctors. The study results showed that current plant doctor system can raise the sale price of agricultural product by about 22%, reduce the cost of pest controlling materials by about 27%, and reduce fertilizer cost by about 27%. The total increase of respondent’s income by plant doctor is about 25%; Both organic and conventional agricultural system samples showed the positive responses toward “supporting one plant tdoctor in one town” system by government budget. However, the present performance of plant doctor system in this study showed significant effect on supporting the plant doctor system by farmers or agribusinesses in organic agricultural system but not in conventional agricultural system. Both “innovativeness” and “problem-solving efficient” played the most important roles for determing these effects in organic agricultural system, but only the “innovativeness” had significant influence in conventional agricultural system. From this study, we suggest that plant doctor training courses should put more effort in imporving the student’s innovative ability. More practical training course and field internship are also critical for improving students’ future performance on diagnosis, prescription, and health management.