A spectacular increase in the production of onions after the severe crop loss during the last monsoon season, together with relatively better yield in potato and banana, has helped India to have a record horticulture harvest of 320.48 million tonnes in this crop year, according to the second advance estimates of horticulture crops released by the Agriculture Ministry on Tuesday.
However, there hasn’t been much increase in area under horticulture crops over 2018-19. The total area under these crops this year was 25.66 million hectares as against 25.43 million ha in the previous year.
While the production of vegetable is projected to go up to 191.77 million tonnes from 183.17 million tonnes in 2018-19, total fruits output may cross 99 million tonnes million tonnes as against close to 98 million tonnes last year.
Onion production is estimated to 26.74 million tonnes as against 22.82 million tonnes in 2018-19 whereas potato output would be 51.3 million tonnes as against 50.2 million tonnes last year. Tomato output is expected to cross 20 million tonnes from 19 million tonnes in the previous year.
The onion production is significantly high in the later parts of the year considering that many onion-growing areas in the country, particularly in Maharashtra and Karnataka witnessed severe floods leading huge crop loss in the previous kharif season.
Among fruits, banana, citrus and apple performed bettered their output last year. The output of plantation crops and spices more or less remained at last year’s levels at 16.24 million tonnes and 9.42 million tonnes respectively.
Source: thehindubusinessline.com