Malakand Division is a remote corner of Pakistan, which is situated in the extreme north of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province. The Division consists of Districts of Swat, Upper Dir, Lower Dir, Bunir, Chitral, Shangla, Bajaur and Malakand. The altitude of the division ranges from 600 - 7854 meters. Agriculture is the bedrock of the division as the population is overwhelmingly dependent on it. The whole division is mountain-locked geographically. A vast number of vegetable crop species, onion being one of them, are grown for subsistence and commercial purposes. The importance of onion crop can be judged from the fact that Malakand division contributed 92.21 % (145068 tons) to the total provincial production and 89.09% (7872 hectares) to the total area planted in the year 2011-12. Although, onion is important commercially for the farmers of this area but they face some chronic problems like non-availability of good quality seed, prevalence of insect pests and diseases and marketing. In District Bunir, Shuga Seed Growers Association has been producing onion seed for long time but for the last 3 years, they faced serious problems like availability of onion mother bulbs from the certified and authentic source, diseases attack on the crop and marketing of seed they produced. The deadly diseases attack, particularly purple blotch, was so severe that crop in the fields were wiped out last year. Consequently, all the growers of Association produced only 400-500 kg onion seed while they would usually produce 2500-3000 Kgs. The marketing situation had become so grim where they could not sell their seed for the last 3 years. In this way, they got discouraged and decided to abandon seed production.
However, the inception of AIP/AVRDC in Pakistan became a source of solace for them as this organization judged the economic importance of the crop in Malakand division and decided to intervene at farmer level. The AIP/AVRDC took the Association on board and provided them onion mother bulbs through the Agriculture Research Institute, Mingora, Swat, which is authentic source of certified seed and mother bulbs. From the Association, four farmers were selected for onion seed production and plantation was done on their lands. A series of crop management trainings, including insects and diseases control, at different stages, was intended to be arranged and the first practical training of this series was imparted to them on “onion seed crop management” on January 20, 2015. In this training, 22 growers participated. Emphasis was given on insects and diseases control, particularly thrips and purple blotch respectively. They were stressed upon to diversify their mono-crop (onion) seed production and include other crops like okra and peas also. Seed production technology of other crops like okra and peas was also given to the farmers.
Marketing of seed was main hindrance for the growers, which had compelled them to discard seed production but they were encouraged to produce more seed as they would be linked-up with the seed dealers in the main markets of Pakistan to sell their seed.
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