Determinants of Post-Harvest Losses in Onion in Pune and Nashik Districts of Maharashtra Sahu Subhashree1, Sharma J.P.2*, Burman R.R.1, Gills Reshma3, Kumar Pramod1, Sharma R.R.1 1ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi 2Vice-Chancellor, Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology of Jammu, J&K 3ICAR- Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Kochi, Kerala *Corresponding author email id: jpscatat@gmail.com
Abstract Horticulture has a huge potential for development of Indian agriculture in particular and Indian economy in general. India is the second largest producer of fruits and vegetables in the world after China. But a major amount of this produce, estimated to be 30 per cent is lost annually in the form of post-harvest losses. It has been observed that there are many factors which lead to post-harvest losses at the farm level. It becomes necessary to isolate such factors or determinants which are majorly associated with the high post-harvest losses. The present study is an attempt to identify the determinants of post-harvest losses with respect to onion. The primary study was conducted in purposively selected Junnar and Dindori blocks of Pune and Nashik districts, respectively. The study revealed that Farm Size, Knowledge level, Training received on post-harvest handling, Variety, Timely labour availability, Quantity harvested and Storage duration were the factors which positively and significantly influenced the quantum of post-harvest losses. So, the emphasis should be on capacity building, knowledge enhancement, breeding and diffusion of the improved varieties to the grass-root farmers and improved infrastructure for better post-harvest management. Concentrated efforts have to be made by all the stakeholders like policy-makers, research organisations, private companies, etc. along with all the actors of onion value chain in order to address these location-specific issues and reduce the post-harvest losses. Top Keywords Determinants, Knowledge, Labour, Onion, Post-harvest losses, Post-harvest management storage, Training, Variety. Top |