Estimation of Post-harvest losses of Onion in Maharashtra and Potato in Uttar Pradesh

The present study was undertaken in 2020 in Pune, Maharashtra and Agra, Uttar Pradesh to estimate the quantum of post-harvest losses in onion and potato respectively at various stages of the supply chain. The sample size was 170 including 60 onion farmers, 60 potato farmers, 10 wholesalers and 15 retailers for each crop, all selected through the process of random sampling from the purposively selected blocks of Junnar and Khandauli respectively. The maximum post-harvest loss in onion was observed at farm level, which was estimated to be 26.65 q/ha. At the farm level, the maximum amount of post-harvest losses was observed at the storage level (27.9%) followed by the harvesting stage (23.48%). The storage losses in onion at the wholesaler level were 3.8 kg/q. The storage losses at the retailer level were observed at 1.73 kg/q from a total figure of 1.83 kg/q. In case of potato, the maximum amount of post-harvest losses was observed at the farm level. However, at the farm level, the highest losses were observed at the harvesting level with 27.09 per cent followed by the on-farm storage level (24.38%). The estimated post-harvest loss of potato at farm level was calculated to be 39.32 q/ha. At the wholesaler and retailer levels, major losses were observed in the storage stage.