Home ›› 02 Aug 2021 ›› Nation
Abu Reza Pramanik, a farmer in Parbotipur upazila of Dinajpur, has changed his fortune by farming Gauramati, a cross-breed mango developed using natural pollination of Langra and Ashina variety.
The new variety brought success for Reza, who failed to achieve solvency by cultivating vegetables including potatoes, ginger, garlic and chili in his land for 14 years.
Desperate to make his ends meet, Reza attended training on mango farming in 2016 and later and planted 175 Haribhanga and 400 Amropolli mango trees on his 12 acre land.
After profiting much from his first harvest, he quickly understood that he could make even more profit by growing Gauramati mangos.
Gauramati, unlike other late varieties of mangoes, is sweet, tasty, succulent and flavored.
Farmers get a windfall profit by selling this variety as it ripens at the end of August to mid-September, when all quality mangoes varieties go out of market. Thus, variety helps extend the mango season by almost a month.
In 2017, he took additional land beside his orchard and planted 2,000 Gauramati mango trees, of which 150 trees already started to bear fruit.
In 2020, he profited Tk 3 lakh by selling mangoes from 150 trees in his orchard.
As the traditional mango season ends in July and only low quality Ashina mango reigned the market for a little longer, Gauramati has ushered a new hope for the farmers to reap a massive profit by cultivating the mango.
Workers at Raza’s orchard said demand of Gauramati mango is very high as no insecticide is used to grow the fruit.
Meanwhile, mangoes from the orchard are sent to Cox’s Bazar, Chattogram, Sylhet, Dhaka, Brahmanbaria, Panchagarh, Rangpur, Bogura and Khulna, among other areas.
Parbotipur Upazila UNO Md Raqibuzzaman said they had motivated Abu Reza to cultivate the mango in his orchard.
“The officials of the upazila are always beside him,” the UNO added.
The mango will bring a possibility and potential for the mango farmers of the district. It will change the economic scenario of the farmers within a couple of years.
Raqibuzzaman said he is hopeful about the commercial cultivation of the mango as its demand and market price is high.
