AbstractOnion agronomy continues to pose problems for scientists, but increasingly these problems concern finding methods of economizing on costs and making the best use of scarce resources, including water. The rapid take-up of fertigation delivered by drip pipes in regions where the terrain permits their use shows that growers are alert to improvements that give economies of labour and inputs, and are ready to put them into practice. Professional advisers are increasingly being used by growers to keep technically up-to-date and to make use of predictions for timing the spraying of crops and also for the scheduling of irrigation through direct field measurements of plant demand. At the same time, older technologies are being revived to tackle problems such as thrips on onions through cultural methods rather than by chemical sprays. Emphasis is placed on the need to regard onion growing as part of the farming system, to include the aspect of rotations in particular, and to suggest that the underground parts of the onion and its co-workers, the mycorrhizas and other soil-living organisms, which may have a protective action against root disease, are still comparatively neglected at the present time and merit greater scientific attention.