Rice is the main crop cultivated in Durg District of Chhattisgarh State, India (Bargali et al 2007, 2009a). Grown on 0.37 million ha, this staple drives the economy in rural areas. In India, women do more than 50% of the farm work (Bargali et al 2009b), but they are not so keen about new technologies related to agriculture. To make women workers aware of advanced technologies in a ricebased agroecosystem and to help them earn more, KVK scientists conducted a study to determine women farmers’ adoption of technologies. A participatory rural appraisal (PRA) was done in five villages in Durg (Anjora, Hasda, Parastarai, Karanja-Bhilai, and Beloudi) from 2000 to 2006. During the PRA survey, the rural women farmers showed interest in trying different technologies related to rice—paddy seed treatment, harvesting the crop with a serrated sickle, safe grain storage, enriching paddy straw for animal feed, and preparing different rice products.

One hundred women farmers, all decision-makers for the household, were randomly selected from the five villages. They were categorized on the basis of landholdings—30 had big (> 4 ha) farms, 41 had medium farms (2–4 ha), and 29 had small farms (1–2 ha). All groups of women farmers attended the different training programs (Figs. 1 and 2), spending 2–7 d on technology components. They were given the essential technology inputs. Demonstrations were set up for five individuals in each category. After 2 years, a field survey using semistructured interview schedules was conducted (Bargali et al 2007). Adoption indices (AI=[total number of women farmers who adopted the technology/total number of women farmers who attended the technology training)/100]) were calculated following Bargali et al (2007) and the reasons for adopting/not adopting the technology were obtained. Women farmers with big farms adopted all five technologies. With AI ranging from 67 to 100, they reported an increase in rice production with the seed treatment. They claimed that the use of a serrated sickle shortened their harvesting time and they were able to store their grains longer. Feeding their animals with enriched paddy