As part of its plans to prevent the onion crisis recurring almost every year during September-December period, the Telangana government has decided to take up onion seed production from the next kharif season for supplying it to farmers on subsidy and encourage them for cultivation of the crop so that the harvest is timed during that period.
Although Telangana has been meeting the 60% seed needs of the country of major crops such as paddy, maize, pearl millet, sorghum, cotton and others, it did not focus on onion seed so far. According to officials, only Maharashtra has been producing onion seed in public sector and Telangana would be the second State to do so.
Managing Director of Telangana State Seed Development Corporation (TSSDC) K. Keshavulu along with a team of officials visited the National Horticultural Research and Development Foundation (NHRDF) at Nashik in Maharashtra on Tuesday and discussed about the Telangana government’s plans to take up onion seed production.
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Capacity building
Mr. Keshavulu stated that it is being planned to take up onion seed production in Wanaparthy district in the next kharif season and in Nizamabad and Adilabad districts in the next rabi season. Before that, training on skills to produce quality onion seed would be given to 25 selected farmers in three phases in March, April and May next. A memorandum of understanding would also be signed between TSSDC and NHRDF on onion seed production in February.
The efforts were aimed at preventing scarcity of onion throughout the year in Telangana, at least from next year by encouraging onion cultivation by providing the seed on subsidy and also the required training in quality seed production. Mr. Keshavulu said NHRDF would provide red, dark red and white varieties of onions for seed production in Telangana which is expected to fetch an income of about ₹80,000 per acre.
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