In the present global scenario, which witnesses extreme climate change amounting to frequent vagaries of weather, the need for agro-met advisory services becomes noteworthy. In this digital era, ICT offers enormous potential to disseminate agro-met information and is being used by various stakeholders to cater the needs for information by the farmers. The study was conducted during the year 2021 with 100 beneficiaries of ICT-based agro-met advisory services furnished by KVK, government departments and various NGOs in Darrang district of Assam to assess its effectiveness. The effectiveness was measured using five dimensions. Nearly 3/4th (74%) of farmers in the study area perceived the information to be timely. In terms of quality, utility, ease of understanding and satisfaction, majority of the respondents considered it to be of moderate level. The radar chart presented using normalized values of different components of effectiveness depicts that ease of understanding contributes most to the effective use of the services. Relational analysis through multivariate regression found that Experience of farming significant at 10% level. Variables Education and ICT tools used were significant at 5% level. R2 (Coefficient of determination) value being 0.556, it was concluded that 55.6% of variance in the dependent variable i.e., effectiveness of agro-met advisory services was due to explained factors. Hence while selecting the beneficiaries for agro-met advisory services, factors like higher experience in farming, higher level of education and use of ICT tools may be considered to increase the effective use of these services.

Keyword: Agro-met advisory services; Effectiveness; ICT; Information needs; Weather.