HORTICULTURAL "produce is highly perishable and has to be marketed and consumed within a short period, The farmers growing fruits and vegetables get disillusioned when the prices crash due to glut in the local market. Small growers can not afford to send their produce to distant markets for better returns. Moreover, the present marketing system lacks infrastructure for proper post-harvest handling of the fresh produce. There.is a scope for farmers to diversify into high valued horticultural crops butare scared of the uncertainties of the market. Government department are propagating to increase the area under cultivation for horticultural crops and providing various facilities/incentives to growers under National Horticulture Mission. It is expected that the production of fruits and vegetables in Punjab will double by the year 2012. The present infrastructure for post-harvest handling of fruits and vegetables is restricted to potato storage which mainly store seed potato at 0-2°C. The potatoes stored in these stores develop sugars and are not favored by consumers. The total capacity of such stores in Punjab is approximately 4 lakh MT which insufficient to store only 12 per cent of the total produce. The expected increase in production of horticultural produce by year 2012 would require additional cold storage capacities, it is estimated that 20 per cent of the produce storage would require 1300 cold stores of 1000-metric tons capacity each. The promotion of horticulture sector heavily depends upon post harvest infrastructure which presently is not sufficient.
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