Over 61,000 tonnes of wheat produced in Rangpur region

Farmers have produced 61,554 tonnes of wheat after completing harvest in Rangpur agriculture region during the 2022-2023 Rabi season.

Meanwhile, farmers are very happy getting all-time high market price of their newly-harvested wheat between Tk 1,750 and Tk 1,850 per maund (every 40- kg) this season.

Officials of the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) said a target of producing 64,706 tonnes of wheat from 18,435 hectares of land was fixed for all five districts of the region this time.

“Farmers finally cultivated wheat in 17,428 hectares of land, 1,007 hectares or 5.46 per cent less than the fixed farming target of the crop this season,” said Additional Director of the DAE for Rangpur region Agriculturist Md. Aftab Hossain.

The fixed farming target of wheat marked a little shortfall following crop diversification and cultivation of vegetables and maize on more lands in the region.

During the last 2121-2022 Rabi season, farmers cultivated wheat on 18,285 hectares of land and produced 63,830 tonnes of the major cereal crop in the region.

Like in previous years, the DAE, Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corporation (BADC), Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI) and other related organisations extended assistance to the farmers to make the wheat farming programme a success this time.

“The government supplied quality wheat seeds and provided the latest technologies, training, fertilizers and other inputs to farmers who achieved a better wheat production this season,” Hossain said.

The farmers mostly cultivated high-yielding wheat varieties like ‘Bijoy’, ‘Pradip’, ‘Sotabdi’, BARI Gom25, BARI Gom26, BARI Gom27, BARI Gom28 and BARI Gom29 using conservation agriculture (CA)-based technologies to enhance production.

Independent Award (food security)-2018 winner Agriculturist Dr MA Mazid said farmers got a high yield of wheat as they cultivated the crop adopting the latest conservation agriculture (CA)-based technologies.

“Adoption of the CA-based strip tillage and bed planting methods in sowing wheat seeds using seeder machines largely increases wheat yield-reducing need for irrigation compared to the full tillage methods and largely saving labour costs,” he said.

Wheat production was being affected due to adverse impacts of high temperatures on its farming from flowering to ripening stages and late sowing of seeds after harvesting late varieties of Aman rice and use of low-quality local seeds in the past.

“However, farmers are sowing high quality, disease resistant and stress-tolerant varieties of wheat seeds timely using the lowest cost CA-based technologies after harvesting short duration Aman rice to get bumper output,” Dr Mazid added.

Deputy Director of the DAE for Rangpur Agriculturist Md. Obaidur Rahman Mandal said there was no recurrence of blast disease and farmers got an excellent yield rate of 3.53 tonnes of wheat per hectare in the region this time.