Unseasonal rain lashed parts of Nashik district on Saturday evening, for the second time in a month, damaging crops and orchards across 225 hectare of land. These crops include onions, wheat and grapes. The crops and orchards in four talukas Malegaon, Baglan, Dindori and Niphad - of Nashik district have been damaged. The state agriculture department has started assessing the crop losses due to the unseasonal rain and will take one or two days to complete the assessment. "We are in the process of assessing the losses and it will take a couple of days to know the exact extent of losses. As per the primary information, grapes have been damaged on 150 hectare, while onion and wheat have been damaged on 50 and 25 hectare, respectively," said A Kulkarni, a senior officer of the agriculture department, Nashik. Meanwhile, the unseasonal rain in Sinnar and other parts of the district on Sunday also damaged onions crops. "The ready to harvest onions in Baglan, Sinnar, Malegaon and other talukas have been damaged due to the unseasonal rain. Farmers had stopped giving water to the onion crops, which were expected to be harvested in a day or two. But the sudden rain damaged the onion crops in parts of the district," said Bharat Dighole, the president of Maharashtra onion growers association. On February 18, the unseasonal rains had damaged grapes and other crops on 2,700 hectare in Baglan and other parts of the district. According to the India Meteorological Department, it will be partly cloudy with one or two spells of rain, or thundershowers for the next three days between March 22 and 24. Source - https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com