Onion Cultivation Guide: Season, Varieties, Curing & Storage (India)

Updated 2026-07-10 · Crop guides

Onion has no MSP price floor, so the harvest is only half the job — how you cure and store the bulbs often decides your profit more than how you grow them. Here is the full cycle, nursery to store.

Season: kharif or rabi

Onion is grown in two main windows, and the difference matters because the rabi crop is the one that stores:

• Kharif (monsoon) — transplanted around June–July, harvested October–December. Good prices at harvest, but these bulbs do not store well — sell them soon.
• Rabi (winter) — transplanted December–January, harvested March–May. This is the main storage crop; well-cured rabi bulbs can be held for months and sold when prices rise.

The whole crop runs about 100–140 days from transplanting, plus 6–8 weeks in the nursery.

Nursery and transplanting

A good stand starts in the nursery. Raise seedlings on a raised bed and avoid an over-thick, leggy nursery — crowded seedlings transplant poorly.

• Transplant at about 6–7 weeks old, when seedlings are pencil-thick at the base.
• Spacing roughly 15 cm between rows and 10 cm between plants; do not plant too deep or bulbs sit awkwardly.
• Onion has shallow roots and hates waterlogging — plant on well-drained loam, ideally pH 6–7.

Water and nutrition

Onion likes frequent light irrigation, not heavy flooding — drip with a little mulch works very well and keeps disease down. The most important timing rule: stop irrigation about 10–15 days before harvest so the necks dry and the bulbs cure for storage.

Onion responds strongly to sulphur, which drives pungency and storage life, alongside a balanced dose from your soil-health card. Avoid heavy late nitrogen — it gives soft, thick-necked bulbs that rot in store.

Pests and diseases

Scout weekly and act on what you actually see:

• Thrips — the main pest; silvery streaks on leaves. Use blue sticky traps to monitor, keep the crop from moisture stress, and treat only above threshold.
• Purple blotch & stemphylium blight — fungal, worse in humid weather. Good spacing and drainage help most; a protectant fungicide class is used when pressure builds.
• Basal rot — a soil-borne rot; use treated seed, good drainage and crop rotation.

This guide never prints chemical doses — the correct product and rate depend on the label and what is cleared in your state. Confirm with your local agriculture officer or KVK, or ask YieldAI in your language with a photo of the damage.

Harvest, curing and storage — where the money is

Harvest when 50–75% of the necks have fallen over. Then cure: leave the bulbs in the shade or in windrows (tops covering bulbs) for a few days, then move to a ventilated store. Remove thick-necked, bolted or damaged bulbs — they rot and spoil the lot.

Because there is no MSP, storage is your main pricing tool: a farmer who can hold cured rabi onions and sell into a shortage earns far more than one forced to sell everything at harvest. Watch the market with the live mandi prices before you sell.

Growing onion in your state

Sowing windows, varieties and typical yields differ by state. See the region guide for yours:

• Onion in Maharashtra (Nashik belt — the biggest producer)
• Onion in Karnataka
• Onion in Gujarat
• Onion in Madhya Pradesh

Common varieties include Nashik Red, Agrifound Light Red, Bhima Super and N-53; pick one notified for your zone.