Marketing of watermelon in Maharshtra

The present study has focused to investigate various marketing functionaries involved and the associated costs, margins and price spread as well as the problems in the production and marketing of Watermelon. The study was carried out in Buldhana district of Maharashtra state. Two development blocks namely Jalgaon Jamod and Sangrampur were selected purposively and a sample of 100 farmers was drawn from four selected villages during 2013–14. Two markets were selected to collect market related data and two marketing channels were prevalent in the study area of which the channel comprising of producer-wholesaler-retailer-consumer, (Channel II) was the most preferred channel followed by more than 89 per cent of the producers. Marketing costs were the highest in Channel-I(producer-consumer). Producer's share in consumer's rupee was highest 94.85 in Channel-I while in Channel-II it was as high as 78 per cent. Lack of knowledge about disease, pest, lack of availability of seed and inadequate storage facility. It is suggested that the farmers should be educated and encouraged to adopt scientific crop production technology and to organize themselves into cooperatives.