Adoption of Post-Harvest Management Practices by Vegetable Growers in Haryana State

Abstract

Vegetables are not only commercially important and nutritionally essential food commodities due to major dietary  source of vitamins, sugars, organic acids, and minerals, and also other phytochemicals including dietary fiber and  antioxidants with health-beneficial effect. It has created high demand for fresh vegetables but major challenge in meeting  this high demand for fresh vegetables is postharvest losses which account about 30.00 per cent in India. Avast quantity of  vegetables is destroying every year due to farmers' lack of knowledge about post harvest technologies. To meet the  domestic a well as the export demands of vegetables it is essential to integrate the various technologies from production to  post-harvest. The study revealed that majority of the respondents (51.7%) belonged to 'moderate' category of awareness  pertaining to PHM practices. They were aware of the practices such as vegetable fruit should not be thrown but put  carefully, it is better to harvest vegetables at coolest part of the day, cleaning and sorting is necessary for high shelf life,  grading is necessary for getting high market price whereas less aware of PHM practices such as sorting of thick necked  onion bulbs, vegetable fruit not to be pulled but clipped with sharp knife or secateurs, accurate extent of post harvest losses  and curing of vegetables to enhance the shelf life since. The proper cleaning or washing before marketing, sorting &  grading of vegetables, safe loading, transportation and safe unloading post harvest management practices were regularly  adopted by the farmers while cooling & curing of vegetables were occasionally adopted by respondents clearly indicates  no storage and processing of produce, essential for better earnings through value addition coupled with increasing food  availability and nutritional security of the country. Lack of remunerative minimum support price policy, lower price of  vegetables and high cost of inputs especially the hybrid seeds followed by price fluctuation, distress sale due to lower price  at time of harvesting, perishable nature of vegetables and decrease in production due to natural calamities were found  serious constraints by almost all respondents.