Improved practices for successful cultivation of Kharif onion

摘要

Vegetables have a significant nutritious value in our daily diet. Onion is the most important bulb crop used in each and every vegetable for cooking purpose as well as table salads. Known for its pungency, Indian onions are available throughout the year. The cultivation of onion has been done for home consumption in the kitchen garden as well as on commercial scale. India is the second largest onion producing country in the world with an area of 13.0 lakh hectares with the annual production of 24.4 MT and has 17.0 tonne average yield per hectare. This vegetable crop grown by Indian farmers accounts for about 20 per cent of the world’s total onion production. The acreage of this crop in Punjab is 10.23 thousand hectares with an average yield of 22.9tonnes per hectare and total annual production of 233.96 thousand tonnes. Three crops i.e. rabi, kharif and late kharif are sown in the Southern-Western parts of India, whereas, two crops of rabi and kharif are sown in the Northern-Western parts of thecountry throughout the year. The Punjab Agricultural University has recommended its cultivation in rabi and kharif seasons to fulfill the requirement throughout the year. Farmers mostly grow onion during rabi season (January-April), but the kharif onion(August-November) has been planted in a very negligible area so far. The plantation ofonion has to be done commonly through nursery during rabi season, but in kharif season for which the nursery has to be sown during mid-June, it will take 6-8 weeks to get ready for plantation. But this period of peak summer and rainfall is the major hurdle in the successful nursery production and farmers are not assured to plant the kharif crop. So, the Punjab Agricultural University has developed a bulb-set technique for the successful cultivation of this season crop.