Sandip VishramGhole (37), a young innovative agripreneur, has developed a purple blotch disease tolerant, light red colored onion variety with superior shelf life. He is a graduate and involved in onion cultivation using modern techniques and machinery.

This variety has been developed by continuous improvement of onion cultivar of Fursungi local variety of Nashik over the last ten years. Based on the criteria of healthy, non-splitting plants with bigger inflorescence and disease tolerance, he adopted the selection method for improving the variety year after year, and finally, the characters got stabilized in 2016.

With distinguishing characters like early maturation, large diameter of leaves, absence of cranking in foliage, ovate, non-splitting, uniform sized big bulbs and strongly adhering light red colored dry skin, the Sandip pyaj variety is also high yielding with the average yield ranging between 42 – 45 ton per hectare.  During the validation at Dr. Balasaheb Sawant Konkan Krishi Vidyapeeth, Dapoli, Maharashtra, the Sandip pyaz was found to be superior over check varieties for its traits viz. average bulb weight (g), number of rings per bulb, ring size, minimum degree of splitting, skin retention and keeping quality. It also recorded significantly higher bulb yield and lower incidence of purple blotch disease as compared all check varieties.

NIF –India has conducted on-farm trials at farmers’ field of Rajasthan and Maharashtra. The variety performed very well and received encouraging feedback from the growers. Over 750 kilogram of seeds of the variety was provided to farmers of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh during the last three years. The application for registration has been submittedat the PPV&FR Authority, New Delhi.