Onion (Allium cepa L.) is among the most important horticultural crops grown worldwide for its culinary preparations and spicing food dishes. Besides being used as condiments, the medicinal properties of onion add value to its importance. India is the second largest producer of onion in the world, but far behind of many countries in terms of productivity. Maharashtra is a pioneer state in onion production contributing 25% of country ’s onion. To ascertain reasons for low productivity of onion, it was thought imperative to find out the constraints faced by farmers in respect of onion production. The data has been collected from total 100 farmers, 10 each from 10 villages from Ahmednagar and Pune districts. It was found from the study that crop damage due to erratic rainfall at the time of harvesting of kharif onion and nursery preparation of rabi onion was the major constraint faced by 73% farmers. In the year 2010, monsoon was delayed by one month and afterwards there was continuous rainfall till November and 200-300 mm rainfall was recorded in onion growing states in the month of Oct-Nov which was unusual. In November, there were unseasonal heavy rains in many onion growing pockets of Maharashtra, which caused damage to onion crop in different stages. The erratic and untimely rains damaged the kharif, late kharif crop as well as rabi onion nursery. The kharif onion ready for harvest was affected by 30-40%, late kharif which was planted in Sept-Oct got affected by 15-20% and rabi nursery damaged by 20-25%. It has been observed that the kharif crop planted in flat beds, which is a regular practice by farmers, gets affected by Anthracnose disease due to water stagnation. Bulb development was affected due to soil borne diseases like bulb rot, besides foliage damage by Colletotrichum. There is need for mass demonstrations of DOGR developed techniques of planting seedlings on raised bed (BBF) and irrigation through drip or sprinkler

Keyword: Constraints; Climatic cha