Post-harvest loss to prune mustard crop

Around 8.5 per cent of this year's mustard crop, or about six lakh tonne of the commodity, will be lost after harvesting, according to latest estimates.

Despite the projection of an all time high mustard crop of 68.5 lakh tonnes, the expected losses would significantly lower oil availability this year.

Based on a study conducted by Mustard Research and Promotion Consortium (MRPC), nearly six lakh tonnes of the mustard will be lost due to poor post-harvest management, bringing down the actual output to 62 lakh tonnes.

"Had proper technologies been employed and incentives given, post-harvest losses would have minimised and mustard output could have crossed over 100 lakh tonnes", MRPC executive director HB Singh said.

Sponsored by technology mission on oilseeds, the study has been billed as the most extensive survey on the subject.

He said during the two and a half year study, stages covered were shattering, handling, cleaning, transportation, storage and processing. It was observed that the maximum loss in mustard was due to shattering when it falls from the standing crop in the field itself.

This is because in most cases the farmers do not know about the arrival of the harvesting stage and work simply on guess work and personal observations.

The study shows losses in mustard during shattering at 4-6 per cent, in threshing at 1-1.5 per cent, it is 0.3-0.4 per cent in cleaning, transportation (0.05-0.1), trading (0.03-0.04), storage (o.1-0.2) and processing (0.35-0.4).