Vol. 11, Special Issue 10 (2022)

In recent days, the need for estimating post-harvest losses of perishables has gained higher prominence in India. Tomato is a highly perishable and inevitable vegetable for human life prompted to study its post-harvest losses at the fresh produce marketing channel in Kolar, one of the top tomato producing districts, in Karnataka. By employing purposive random sampling, the primary data was collected from various stakeholders for the period 2018-19 in Kolar Tomato market which was the second largest market for tomatoes in Asia. Tabular analysis and descriptive statistical analysis were used for the study. The traditional APMC channel (Farmers- Commission agent-Traders-Wholesalers-Retailer-Consumers) was purposively selected which had more intermediaries and higher business volume. The results showed that the post-harvest losses at the farmers, traders, wholesalers, retailers, and consumers’ stages were 9.42 per cent, 2.2 per cent, 3.15 per cent, 4.49 per cent, and 3.95 per cent, respectively. The total post-harvest losses of Tomato were estimated at 22.23 per cent at the fresh tomato marketing channel. The major constraints faced by the stakeholders were inadequate financial facilities, price fluctuations, transportation, lack of market infrastructure, and more. Since there is scope for reducing post-harvest losses and overcoming these constraints, the policymakers shall work on the policies to improve the market infrastructures and market intelligence at the grass-root level.