Onion Storage

 Just like potatoes, onions live and grow underground, get dug up and then often times have to sit in storage before they end up on the table. The Treasure Valley supplies about 40% of the nation’s winter onions, but its storage season typically ends in May. That curtails profits both to local growers—who can’t sell as much product to local onion ring processors as they’d like—and to those processors—who pay long-haul shipping from other regions come June. At the University of Idaho’s Parma Research and Extension Center, Extension Onion Specialist Bill Buhrig is evaluating private onion varieties that can resist sprouting and decay deeper into the summer: “One of the things we’re doing with our long term storage trial is we’re evaluating common varieties that are grown in the Treasure Valley to see how well they can store.

 Thus far a couple of varieties have been identified with outstanding long-term storage potential that can be held into mid-July. “If another two months’ of supply could be processed locally, it would be a $20 million boost to our onion industry.

 The next step is to develop production methods—possibly even a planting-time head-start with onion sets rather than seeds—to ensure that those longer storing but unfortunately smaller onions can make the generous size that Treasure Valley processors need.