Off-season watermelons delights Rajshahi farmers

Watermelons hanging from sheds is now a common sight in villages across Rajshahi division’s Rajshahi, Naogaon, Chapainawabganj, and Natore districts, where over 100 farmers are earning profits by growing the juicy fruit in the off-season.

Villagers are using bamboo-made trellises instead of the traditional method to grow the otherwise summer fruit.

At first, they prepare the seedbeds and cover them with high-quality polythene.

They then plant the watermelon seeds, maintaining a distance of one foot between them, said Mahmudul Faruk, deputy director of the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), Natore.

After the seeds sprout, they place a bamboo-made trellis over the seedbed to create a support system for the mature watermelon vines, according to the DAE official.

Md Sirajul Islam, additional director of Rajshahi divisional DAE office, said farmers are gradually becoming interested in watermelon cultivation.

Almost 26 hectares of land in Rajshahi, Naogaon, Chapainawabganj and Natore districts have been brought under watermelon cultivation.

Of these, five hectares are in Rajshahi’s Charghat, Godagari and Tanore upazilas, 19 hectares in Naogaon’s Atrai, Badalgachhi, Mohadebpur, Patittola, Dhamor Haat, Porsha, Manda and Niamatpur upazilas, 1.58 hectares in all the upazilas of Chapainawabganj, and 0.4 hectares in Natore’s Naldanga and Singra upazilas.

According to the farmers of the division, each watermelon weighs 3-3.5 kilogrammes and is delicious to eat.

The fruit takes 70 days to mature and will be ready to hit the market a week later, said DAE sources.

The fruit has high demand as it is available also in winter and therefore expensive.

Quoting local farmers, Selim Reja, an agricultural officer of Singra, said each kg of off-season watermelon was sold for Tk 65 to Tk 70 wholesale and Tk 80 retail a couple of months ago.

He further mentioned that farmers make a profit of Tk 1 lakh from a bigha of off-season watermelons.

Nitish Chandra, a farmer of Natore’s Singra upazila, who cultivated the fruit on 70 decimals of land and is expecting a profit of Tk 2 lakh, told The Business Post, “I planted 2,200 watermelon seeds comprising at least five different varieties. If all goes well, I am expecting a good profit.”