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found that a higher rural labor supply leads to greater adoption of labor-intensive ricevarieties in Taiwan. Harris (1972) has found that shortages of family labor explainnonadoption of HYVs in India. Several studies, however, have not found the availabilityof labor to be a major determinant of the adoption of new technologies (Shakyaand Flinn 1985).The above list of adoption constraints is not exhaustive and it may differ fromone ecosystem to another. Conflicting conclusions can also emerge from studies fromdifferent regions or countries because of different social, cultural, and institutionalenvironments apart from pure economic factors. It is therefore essential to providecomprehensive information about the interactions among the various factors that generatethe observed adoption patterns.Analysis of constraintsBihar accounts for nearly 12% of the rice area of the country but its share of total riceproduction is only around 9%. In Bihar, rice occupies around 50% of the gross croppedarea; however, about 70% of the rice area in Bihar is rainfed. The rainfed lowland riceecosystem constitutes the highest area (40%), followed by the rainfed upland riceecosystem (20%) and deepwater rice ecosystem (10%). Because the rainfed lowlandecosystem has the most rice area, this study was designed to identify and analyzeconstraints to the adoption of MVs of rice and their component technologies in thisecosystem.Data and methodologyThe study used both secondary and farm-level primary data. Time-series secondarydata were collected and used to analyze trends in area, production, and yield of rice inBihar from 1970 to 1998 (Table 1). The trends in adoption of HYVs of rice andfertilizer consumption in the state were also analyzed. Compound annual growth rateswere estimated to analyze the trends. To study the decade-wise performance, the spanof 28 years was divided into three periods: (1) 1970-71 to 1979-80, (2) 1980-81 to1989-90, and (3) 1990-91 to 1997-98.Table 1. Area, production, and yield of rice inBihar. a Area Production YieldYears (000 ha) (000 t) (kg ha –1 )1970-71 5,134 4,631 9031980-81 5,339 4,496 8381990-91 5,156 5,791 1,1171997-98 5,027 6,899 1,372a Data are for triennium ending average.310 Kumar and Jha