More than 50% of the onion procured by the central and state agencies has already rotted as the wholesale prices of the bulb have crashed 80% in the country’s largest due to record production.Traders said they fear a further fall in prices next month when the kharif crop from Maharashtra will hit the market.The average wholesale price of onion has tumbled to Rs 5.85 a kg at the Lasalgaon Agriculture Produce Market Committee in Maharashtra from Rs 32.48 in the year-ago month. Prices hit the lowest of this season at Rs 1 per kg on October 17. At the Bengaluru APMC, prices of kharif onion are ruling in the range of Rs 5 to Rs 11 a kg.Traders said this is despite rotting of about half of the onions procured by the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation (Nafed) and the Small Farmers' Agribusiness Consortium (SFAC), which is the manager of the price stabilisation fund set by the Centre.The rest of the stock was sold at just about half of its purchase price."Nafed suffered large losses in the onion it had procured and stored,” said Nanasaheb Patil, director at Nafed. “The losses suffered by the country's farmers, who produced 45 lakh tonne onion, were of same extent and no one is ready to take responsibility for these huge losses suffered by farmers."Nafed had procured 5,000 tonne of onion from the last rabi harvest.Top executives at SFAC refused to share information on its procurement or comment on the rotting of onion or the losses suffered by the agency on account of that.But industry executives said SFAC had procured 12,567 tonne of onion until September 15. Of which, it managed to sell only 5,518.55 tonne."The Madhya Pradesh government had procured 10.40 lakh tonne onion worth Rs 62 crore, of which about 70% was rotted at the warehouses. We kept it at warehouses as we do not have proper onion storage structures," said an official of the MP government.