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Institute of Agribusiness Management, S.V. Agricultural College, ANGRAU, Tirupati-517 502.
Tomato, one of the most viewed crops in studies and NEWS reflects instability and frequent fluctuations in case of market related aspects starting from facilities for grading and packaging to sources for required information, transportation, availability of markets, malpractices at markets etc. affects the farmers share in consumer’s rupee in tomato crop. Hence, this study aims to study constraints faced by tomato growers and chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh was purposely selected for this study as Andhra Pradesh rank first in tomato production in country which contribute 16.22 per cent of total production in India (Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) Statistical data, 2020) and Chittoor district stands first in production of tomato in Andhra Pradesh. The study was conducted with a sample size of 120 tomato growing farmers from six top villages in production from three mandals of Chittoor district. The study revealed that malpractices in market was the major constraint faced by tomato growers and rank first, followed by mandi infrastructure and storage facilities ranked second and third in constraints whereas grading and packaging, market intelligence and transportation ranked fourth, fifth and sixth respectively in case of constraints faced by the sample tomato farmers.
KEYWORDS: Constraints, Mandi, Market intelligence, Grading, Malpractices, Packaging, Infrastructure, Instability, Fluctuations.