ABSTRACT:

The study conducted to assessed the socio-economic characteristics of tomato farmer adopters of zeroenergy cooling chamber technology in Kano State, Nigeria. Multi-stage purposive and random samplingtechnique was used to select 401 respondents from the three Agricultural Zones in the study area. Primarydata were collected using structured questionnaire. Descriptivestatisticaltool was to analyse the data. Theresult revealed that the mean age of the respondents was 43 years and the mean house-hold size was 9persons. The average farm land was 6 Ha with a mean farming experience of 13 years. The result furtherrevealed that all (100%) the tomato farmers were males and 90.9% were married. Only (31.9%) of thefarmers had primary education with mixed cropping (55.3%) as their primary occupation. The result alsoshowed that majority (50.8%) of the farmers are members of cooperative organisation and had contact withextension agents at least twice a month. Majority (60.4%) cultivated UTC tomato variety and 33.9%cultivated Roma VF variety. The average yield obtained in 2019/2020 tomato production season was 480baskets. Results on types of tomato packaging, handling and storage technology used before Zero EnergyCooling Chamber adoption indicated that the use of crates on the overall was highly effective with a meanvalue of 3.48. The study concluded that majority of the respondents were all males and fall withineconomically productive age group. UTC tomato variety was majorly cultivated in the area with a good yieldwith traditional raffia basket is the most effective method of tomato handling, packaging and storage prior toZero Energy Cooling Chamber technology adoption. The study recommended that farmers shouldencourage more on the use of modern production technology and also group formation to enable them haveaccess to both government and non-governmental support.