Mobile phones can act as a catalyst to disseminate agriculture knowledge through short message service (SMS) to the farmers. The KVK Gulbarga started use of SMS service from November 2009 for the benefit of the farming community of Gulbarga district free of cost. In three years 5500 farmers, who were mainly from Farmers Club, KVK contact farmers, Self Help Groups and Extension functionaries got registered with KVK SMS portal for receiving messages on agriculture. SMS were sent on agronomic & horticulture practices, plant protection measures, organic methods, weather forecasting, market opportunities, livestock management, new innovations, varieties, availability of seeds and other inputs etc. Daily, need based/ situation based SMS were sent to farming community in Kannada language understandable to the farmers. This SMS application system also provided grouping of the famers according to the crops grown and their information needs, so that SMS alerts could be addressed as per their need. The result of this mobile SMS service were indeed encouraging. Farmers were able to save their time, energy and money to the extent of 80 percent. SMS reaches the target mobiles within a very short period of time enabling farmers to react immediately for any clarification with the scientists. Farmers mainly depended on the

SMSs pertaining to the weather forecasting (83%), IPM(77%), disease management (72%), new varieties and seeds (68%), Livestock management (65%), low cost agriculture implements and machinery (50%), organic practices (45%). Thus, this service were cost effective and extremely useful to the farmers of the Gulbarga District for taking right decisions at right time and hence for their development.