Instability and forecasting using ARIMA model in area, production and productivity of onion in India.
Onion is a bulbous spice crop which is produced and consumed largely in India as well as in the world. It has numerous medicinal uses for treating diseases. Amongst the onion producing countries in the world, India ranks second in area and production, the first being China. India being a second major onion producing country in the world has a productivity of 10.16 t ha only (FAO 2008) Time Series data covering the period of 1978 2008 was used for the study. Among the parametric trend models cubic trend model is found to adequately delineate trends in area, production and productivity of onion. Onion showed high instability in period II in area, production and productivity. The study also focuses on forecasting the cultivated area and production of onion in India using Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model. The analyses forecast onion production for the year 2020 to be about 23.02 million tonnes. These projections will help information of good policies with respect to relative production, price structure as well as medicine frontier at least of onion in the country.