Assessing the post-harvest losses of spice crops: Findings from Ri-Bhoi and west Jaintia hills districts of Meghalaya

In this study, an attempt was made to find out post-harvest losses during marketing of ginger and turmeric in the state during 2022–23. Ri-Bhoi and West Jaintia Hills districts are the largest producers of ginger and turmeric respectively and are purposively selected for the study. Three villages growing ginger and another three villages growing turmeric were selected from Bhoirymbong and Laskein blocks in Ri-Bhoi and West Jaintia Hills. The study was conducted on 120 spice growers obtained by randomly selecting twenty from each selected village. The study reveals that the majority of ginger farmers (88.33%) and turmeric farmers (90.00%) are marginal in nature. The average post-harvest loss of ginger and turmeric for all the categories of farmer were 25.73% and 4.54 % where the highest loss of ginger (31.68%) and turmeric (6.37%) were found in small and marginal farmers respectively. High losses of ginger during storage are reportedly due to lack of proper storage facilities of the rhizomes. A proper storage and procurement policy of the spices may be facilitated so that storage losses and losses due to quantity deduction by buyers can be minimized.