Onion acreage in the coming kharif season in the country, including in the Nashik belt of Maharashtra, is unlikely to change despite frequent hailstorms and unseasonal rains in the last few months, top officials said.
Annually around 10-12 lakh hectares comes under onion cultivation during the kharif season and this time it is likely to remain the same, RP Gupta, director, National Horticultural Research and Development Foundation (NHRDF), said.
There were fears that farmers would shift to other crops in the wake of hailstorms and unseasonal rains.
Around 70% of the country’s onion supply comes from Maharashtra.
Farmers have been getting good rates for onions and therefore they will be going in for the same crop, Gupta said.
This time seed supply also does not pose any problem since there was excess production in the past, he said.
The country usually requires around 10,000 tonne for the season. India’s annual output for the last two years has been about 19 million tonne, despite uneven rain. About 40% of the sowing is in the kharif season. At present, the market is being fed with the rabi crop and prices have increased only gradually in the past two months, by 10-15%.
According to Gupta, NHRDF has been supplying 2-3% of the total seed stocks to farmers and distributes around 1,000 quintals during the season. Around 80% of the seeds come from farmers themselves and the remaining are taken care of by private agencies and government institutions, he said.
Jai Gopal, director, Directorate of Onion and Garlic Research, agrees and says this time there have been no issues with seed supply. The directorate, which does a lot of resarch on new varieties, has some 50 different varieties and has been inviting farmers to use them. This time, the focus has been on developing varieties that resist water logging and drought , primarily because of the past instances when fields remained water-soaked, he said.