چكيده فارسي :
Livestock innovations and technologies are generated and promoted by multifarious research and
development organizations with heavy investments across the globe. Till date, various isolated studies are
conducted on the adoption, diffusion and impact of technologies in different pockets with varying
indicators and variables. However, a comparative analysis of these different innovations and technologies
of social and economic importance is not explored in India. For example, impact of innovations like
cross-breeding, azolla production, Artificial insemination, use of mobiles in dairying etc. cannot be
compared or analyzed on single criteria using common indicators. Hence, with this theoretical
background, the authors have made an effort to identify important dairy innovations in India which have
created socio-economic impact for the farming community by application of Delphi technique. The paper
deals with the details of Delphi technique to identify important dairy innovations in India and have shared
the experience of Delphi technique by analyzing the strengths and weaknesses. The study classified the
innovations under seven broad categories viz. feeding, breeding, health care, management, marketing,
ICT and miscellaneous (others) and reported concentrate feeding, Artificial insemination, vaccination,
clean milk production, dairy products preparation, use of mobiles and integrated dairy farming,
respectively as the important dairy innovations of social and economic importance in Indian dairying
sector. The authors indicated that Delphi technique had the major merits of saving resources like time and
money for conducting face-to-face interaction, could solve complex problem very easily without the
dominance of few experts over others and maintained anonymity till the completion of the study. The
Delphi method faced the challenges of poor response rate of experts and was perceived to be timeconsuming
and laborious. Although this study has identified dairy innovations of social and economic
importance in India, it has opened-up a new research area for majority of the researchers and experts
across the globe to develop field based indicators and parameters to study the impact of any particular
innovation in agriculture and dairy sector.
