Performance of vegetable production in India with special reference to Punjab

The vegetables all over the world are known for being a rich source of nutrients. The paper aims to analyse vegetable production performancein India with special reference to Punjab. The study was based on secondary data pertaining to area, production, productivity of vegetables and results were supplemented by the findings of the studies conducted earlier. The results of the study showed that the global vegetable production has reached to 1012.5 million tonnes in 2010?11 and India accounts for 14 per cent share and rank second in total vegetable production in the world. The area under vegetables had almost doubled while the production had increased by three times over period 1985?86 through 2010?11 in India. West Bengal had the highest area under vegetable production which constituted 15.9 percent of national vegetable area. The area and production were the highest in the case of potato crop in India as well as in Punjab. During the period 1990?91 to 2005?06, the increase in production of vegetables in Punjab was found to be due to the effect of area but during the 2005?06 to 2010?11, the effect of productivity was higher. Still there is scope of increasing the productivity of vegetables in Punjab as yield of most of the vegetables in comparison to highest yield in some of states were lower by more than 7 per cent.