Role of Education, Extension and Information in Development of Agricultural Biotechnology from the Viewpoint of the Subject Specialists

Today improving attitudes towards environmental issues and considering it as one of the national capitals, leads to the use of biotechnology in order to achieve sustainable development goals. The purpose of this cause-correlation study was to analyze viewpoint of biotechnology specialists toward the role of education, extension and information in agricultural biotechnology development. The statistical population consisted of biotechnology specialists involved in academic and research institutes at Tehran Province (N=97) from 85 specialists were randomly selected based on Krejcie and Morgan sampling table. The instrument face and content validity was verified by a panel of agricultural extension and education and biotechnology specialists. A reliability analysis of questionnaire was determined through ordinal alpha coefficient (0.71-0.86). Descriptive results of the research showed that majority of specialists’ perception (57.6%) toward agricultural biotechnology development were at the moderate level (Mean: 3.60). Correlation analysis showed that there was a positive and significant correlation (p=.01) between variables include: education, information, agricultural extension and respondents’ viewpoint toward agricultural biotechnology development. Calculating ordinal regression indicated that variables such as education, agricultural extension and information could explain 32% the odds of respondents’ viewpoint variance toward agricultural biotechnology development.