Crop Plans / Vegetables & spices / Onion
Crop programme · per acreOnion
The full stage-by-stage programme is below and in the PDF: what to put on, at which stage, by which method, and the pack it comes in. Every figure is VAN’s published plan, not a calculation.
When did you sow?
Answer this and the page orders itself around your field. Skip it and nothing is lost, every rate, quantity and method below is exactly where it was.
Every band, every stage.
The programme matrix. Every band across every stage, per acre, with commodity inputs greyed and every product shown as its real pack.
| Band | Land Preparation/Transplanting | Germination | Early Growth (20 DOT) | Grand Growth (40 DOT) | Maturity (50 DOT) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Phosphorus |  |  | | ||
| Nitrogen |  Zinc Coated Urea · 1 bag · 50 kg Broadcasting | CAN N 26% · 1 bag · 50 kg Broadcasting | |||
| Potash |  |  | | ||
| Secondary Nutrient |  |  | | ||
| Soil Amendment |  |  | |||
| Micronutrients |  | ||||
| Foliar |  |
What to buy for your acres.
Tick the stages you are planning, set your acres, and this is the onion programme turned into bags and packs. Published rate multiplied by your acres, no estimate in between.
Tick the stages. Set your acres. Send the list.
Counts are the published per-acre rates added up across the stages you tick, multiplied by your acres. VAN confirms the final price, availability and delivery on WhatsApp.
Type the number from your soil report, or pick its band, for any of these. The plan above adds product where your land is short. For phosphorus, potash and zinc it takes a quarter off where your reading is healthy, never on nitrogen. Leave a row blank if you have no reading for it. This adjustment is a pilot.
- Green Phosphate50 kg bag · Land Preparation/Transplanting1bag · 50 kgYour choice:
Same bag size, different bag. Fusion Phosphate is TSP at 46% P₂O₅. About 44% more phosphate per bag than Green Phosphate’s 6-32-0, and no nitrogen with it. Green Phosphate is the humic-coated acidic grade, built for alkaline ground. The plan’s number of bags does not change if you switch; what you put on the field does. At 50 kg a bag: Green Phosphate 16.0 kg P₂O₅ + 3.0 kg N, Fusion Phosphate 23.0 kg P₂O₅ and no nitrogen.
- V. Ammonium Phosphate (V-Phosphate)10 kg bag · Early Growth (20 DOT), Grand Growth (40 DOT)2bags · 20 kg
- Vital Urea25 kg bag · Early Growth (20 DOT)1bag · 25 kg
- Fusion Potash25 kg bag · Land Preparation/Transplanting1bag · 25 kg
- Vital Potash20 kg bag · Grand Growth (40 DOT), Maturity (50 DOT)1bag · 20 kg
- Green Sulfur1 kg pack · Early Growth (20 DOT), Grand Growth (40 DOT), Maturity (50 DOT)6packs · 6 kg
- V-Mag Essential5 kg bag · Grand Growth (40 DOT), Maturity (50 DOT)1bag · 5 kg
- V-Compost20 kg bag · Land Preparation/Transplanting1bag · 20 kg
- Humi Grow8 kg bag · Germination1bag · 8 kg
- V-Transform3 kg bag · Early Growth (20 DOT)1bag · 3 kg
- VL-NPK1 L pack · Grand Growth (40 DOT)1pack · 1 L
- Zinc Coated Urea not a VAN productcommodity input · 50 kg bag · Early Growth (20 DOT)1bag · 50 kg
- CAN not a VAN productcommodity input · 50 kg bag · Grand Growth (40 DOT)1bag · 50 kg
The message carries the list above. Add your district and VAN replies with price and the nearest dealer.
The list above reads your soil test, not just the crop.
Enter your soil report in the list builder, or pick your district and it fills from the Punjab survey’s own median across 770,160 samples, and the quantities move with what your ground actually shows. On onion it can answer 6 readings: Phosphorus (P₂O₅), Potash (K₂O), Zinc, Organic matter, pH, EC (salinity).
Not offered on this crop: boron, iron, copper, manganese. The published onion programme carries no product that supplies them, so the row is left out rather than offered and doing nothing. Adding one is a change to the programme itself, not to this tool.
What the onion programme puts on your field.
Per acre, across the whole programme. The published rates multiplied by the analysis printed on each row. Nothing modelled.
Not counted in the total above: Zinc Coated Urea. The plan gives this no nutrient analysis (“no analysis printed”), so it is left out of the total rather than given a figure it does not have. The real total is therefore higher than shown.
What the crop takes out is not shown for onion, and here is why. No credible removal coefficient found. The one source giving onion also gave the identical figures for tomato, chilli and potato, which is not real data.
How much water the onion season needs.
A nutrition plan only works if the crop gets its water. This panel shows what the season needs, what rain normally gives, and what must come from irrigation.
No sowing date given, so this counts from the middle of VAN’s published window (December). Answer the question at the top of the page and it uses your date instead.
Pick your district and the figures appear. They come from the nearest weather station with published normals, and the page tells you which one and how far away it is.
- It is not measured with the full equation. FAO’s standard method needs humidity, wind and solar radiation. The Pakistan Meteorological Department normals this site carries have temperature and rain and not those, so the reference figure uses Hargreaves, the method FAO itself gives for exactly this case. It is an estimate.
- It is probably on the low side for Punjab. FAO’s crop coefficients are published for a sub-humid climate. Its own caption says relative humidity around 45% and light wind. Punjab in the dry season is drier and windier than that, and FAO’s own correction for arid climates raises the coefficient. Applying that correction needs humidity and wind data this site does not have, so the figure above is closer to a floor than a ceiling.
- It is what the crop uses, not what you have to pump. Nothing here allows for what a watercourse loses on the way, for water running past the roots, or for the extra needed to leach a salty soil. And the rain shown is all the rain. How much of a July downpour a field actually keeps depends on your soil and your slope, and there is no honest way to work that out from here.
Method: FAO Irrigation and Drainage Paper 56. Crop evapotranspiration, Table 11 (lengths of crop development stages) and Table 12 (single crop coefficients). Temperature and rainfall: WMO Climatological Standard Normals 1991–2020 (1991–2020), Pakistan Meteorological Department. Normals, not this season. What a month is usually like, averaged over 30 years.
Nutrition decides about 1/4 of the yield. Sowing, seed, water, weeds and pests decide the rest. The farm discipline simulator scores a whole season across 10 levers, and it exists for wheat and potato, each with its own levers and its own weights. It is not offered on onion because wheat’s 10 levers do not apply to onion. Each crop needs its own. What is being built, and what each needs →
About a quarter of the nitrogen in the bag feeds the crop. The rest leaves as gas or drains past the root.
Why it goes, what VAN builds against each loss, and the 17 nutrients and the barrel that show where your own season leaks. Written once, with its sources.
The plan names a method for every row.
Broadcasting, placement, side dressing, fertigation and spray are 5 different things. Read what each one means before you open the PDF.
▸ Tap a method to read it
Spread evenly over the soil surface, before or at sowing, and worked in by tillage or by the first irrigation. For a basal granule it is the last choice: drill it if you can (D-207).
1 product rule overrides the table. Vital Urea is a coated slow-release urea and is applied by drilling at sowing (beside and below the seed, never touching it), by side dressing, or by broadcasting, never by fertigation. The fertigation rows in the nitrogen band are commodity urea, which is a different material.
VAN’s phosphorus products.
Programme focus: P-Fe-K. The PDF names which products go on, at which stage. These are the VAN products in those nutrient groups.
These are per-acre programmes, not a prescription for your field.
A nutrition plan is built on a typical crop and a typical soil. It is not a substitute for a soil test. VAN prepares farm-specific plans against a grower's own soil analysis, yield target and the other variables that decide a rate. Ask for one on WhatsApp or at kisan@van.com.pk.