Growers in Rajshahi sell mango worth Tk 87cr this season

Mangoes added Tk 87 crore to the economy of Rajshahi in the just ended harvesting and marketing season in the district.

The mango season ended around a month back in Rajshahi but few varieties, including Ashwina, BARI-4 and Katimon, are still available.

Towfiqur Rahman, Additional Deputy Director of the Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE), said that mangoes worth around Tk 86.85 crore were sold in the district, while the previous year’s Sales were around Tk 71.82 crore.

Towfioqur said mangoes were cultivated on around 17,943 hectares of land yielding around 2.17 lakh tonnes of mango this season. In the previous 2019-2020 season, the farmers harvested around 1.80 lakh tonnes of mango from 17,686 hectares of land.

In the current season, around 15 metric tonnes of mangoes were exported to various European countries, including Germany, France, Italy and Switzerland, against 12 tonnes in the previous season.

Meanwhile, ‘Catimon’, a mango variety of Thailand, is giving mango round the year in the region breaking the existing record of around three months harvesting season from May to mid-August of the delicious fruit.

The tree of exotic variety contains mango and flower or budding simultaneously giving yield three to four times in a year against the single one of the conventional varieties.

Rafiqul Islam, a farmer of Durgapur, has established an orchard of the non-conventional mango variety at Maria village inspiring many of his villagers to follow the path.

He collected 1,100 saplings of the variety at Tk 180 per piece from Dinajpur and transplanted those on 25 bigha of land on pond embankment around two years back. Flowers started appearing in the subsequent year.

Rafique said the number of fruits was non-satisfactory due to less weight and height of trees last year.

But he got three to five kilograms of yield from each of the trees on an average during the latest season. He’s hoping to get mangoes four times this year.

Dr Alim Uddin, Principal Scientific Officer of Regional Fruit Research Station, said they are conducting research on Thailand’s variety to assess its extent of disease infestation.

However, the variety has already reached the farmers’ level directly creating a new dimension in the field of mango farming.

With the passing of time many high yielding mangoes and modern

technologies are coming and enriching the mango production sector

gradually vibrating the region’s economic sector.

Dr Alim said mango farming in Ultra High Density Mango Planting (UHDMP) method has gained popularity as the growers are getting additional income after the best uses of the method in the region, including its vast Barind tract.