Relationship between knowledge and awareness of rubber root disease among the aboriginal at Kampung Orang Asli Bukit Payong / Amirul Syalihin Zainul Arifin

The importance of knowledge of disease in rubber is very important in small holder and estate. For small holder of rubber industry in Malaysia, aborigines play as a role of rubber tapper. The study was conducted to determine the relationship between knowledge and awareness among the aborigines on rubber root disease. A set of questionnaire are distributed to 59 respondents at Kampung Orang Asli (KOA) Bukit Payong, Alor Gajah in Melaka. This questionnaire were consists 14 question to investigate the relationship between knowledge and awareness towards rubber root disease among them. The results of Spearman Correlation showed a significant and strong relationship between knowledge and awareness on rubber root disease among respondents. The study concluded that even though there is an involvement of related field agency to spread the knowledge among aborigines but probably there is a barrier towards them such as language barrier. As a result, they take their own initiative to overcome the rubber root disease through medium level of knowledge. The study recommended that there should be more involvement of other agencies to monitor the small holder rubber tapper in root disease management to increase their knowledge and awareness towards rubber root disease.