Fresh tomatoes to hit market soon: Centre

New Delhi: Fresh tomatoes will hit market in a couple of days as picking of crops have started in Kolar, a major producing area, the Centre said on Friday.

"As per feedback from District Horticultural officials in Chittoor and Kolar, tomato crop this year is substantially better than last year," the Ministry of Agriculture said in a statement.

"Kharif tomato areas are set to increase substantially over last year in major producing States of Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu," the statement added.

As per Ministry of Agriculture’s assessment with State Government, the targeted kharif tomato area this year is 2.72 lakh hectare as against 2.67 lakh hectare sown last year. Crop conditions are reported to be good in major producing areas of Chittoor in Andhra Pradesh and Kolar in Karnataka, the statement said.

The prices of tomatoes, onions and potatoes have remained high due to reduced output last year. Moreover, a hot and dry summer since April had strained supplies of many commonly consumed vegetables, shifting demand towards potato, onion and tomato.

The Ministry also said good and timely monsoon rains this year has provided big boost for kharif crops, including onion and other horticultural crop like tomato and potato.

As per the assessment of Ministry of Agriculture with the State Governments, the area targeted for kharif sowing of major vegetables namely, onion, tomato and potato have seen significant increase over last year.

The availability of onion in domestic market is comfortable notwithstanding marginally lower production of onion in rabi-2024 season as compared to the production last year.

The target area under Kharif onion this year is 3.61 lakh hectare which is 27 per cent higher than last year. In Karnataka, the top Kharif onion producing State, sowing is completed in 30 per cent of its targeted area of 1.50 lakh hectare and sowing is making good progress in other major producing States.

The onion currently available in the market is rabi-2024 crop, harvested during March-May, 2024. The estimated rabi-2024 production of 191 lakh tonnes is sufficient to meet the domestic consumption of about 17 lakh tonnes per month and continued restraint on export within 1 lakh tonnes per month.

The area under Kharif potato this year is targeted to increase by 12 per cent over last year. Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand have covered almost the entire targeted sowing area while sowing in Karnataka and other States are in good progress. As per Ministry data, 273.2 lakh tonnes of Rabi potato had been stored in cold storage this year which is sufficient to meet the consumption demand. The prices of potato regulates the rate at which it’s released from the cold storages during the storage period from March to December.