Influence of different growing conditions and substrates for growth, yield  and quality of Sukhsagar cultivar of onion

Present experiments were carried out with the aim to study the influence of different growing conditions and substrates for vegetative growth of plants, initiation of root, development of bulbs, and quality attributes of Sukhsagar cultivar of onion as it is being an indigenous popular local cultivar in West Bengal and there is no information available in the hydroponic and sand based production of bulbs. Hence, Hydroponic and sand-based growing were experimented under the open roof condition of direct sunlight and a field experiment was undertaken at Horticulture Research Station Mondouri following Completely Randomized Design with three replications during the Rabi season of 2023-2024. The results revealed that the custom low-cost hydroponic system outperformed all other growing conditions of sand and soil in terms of vegetative growth of the plants, initiation of root and bulb, bulb development, and quality of bulbs. The floating bed of the hydroponic system revealed the early bulb initiation faster rate of bulb development and higher pungency of bulbs followed by sand and soil-based growing conditions. The production of onion bulbs in the low-cost hydroponic system even curtails the total time span for growing the crops and might be a better option for future bulb growers to get extra early bulbs with the least input cost and management.