The government plans to boost bamboo production in the country's northern belt as a means of eradicating poverty in the poverty-prone districts of Bangladesh.
As part of the initiative, the government has already set up a bamboo research centre in Nilphamari, the first of its kind in the country.
The government is financing the project at a cost of Tk nearly 190 million.
Chittagong-based Bangladesh Forest Research Institute (BFRI) has been imparting hands-on training to hundreds of farmers since March 2017.
The centre is expected to be inaugurated sometime in September under which some 1,800 farmers will be trained up by 2020.
"We've already trained some 300 farmers, the rest will be done within the deadline," Dr. Rafiqul Haider, project director at the centre, told the FE on Saturday.
Mr Haider, a divisional officer at the Institute, said the bamboo production is expected to rise by at least 40 per cent from its existing level.
The farmers are also being trained in how to treat bamboos to make durable products by tropical plants.
Bamboo has many diversified uses, including as household utensils.
Mr Haider said the farmers may plant new varieties as well invented by the Institute, which will be shown in the centre's demonstration fields.
The Institute has invented a number of species of the grass family over the years.
He said they been trying to ink an agreement with INBAR, a Chinese research institute.
The centre has, however, been built at Domar Upazilla, nearly 17 kilometres north-west of the Nilphamari district headquarters. It has been selected as almost every house of the bordering upazila has bamboo grooves.
Even some people cultivate it as a source of their livelihood.
Project officials said Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had earlier instructed the authorities to make such a research centre in the northern belt at a national conference of deputy commissioners held in 2013.
Apart from commercial purpose, bamboo proves to be potentially good for soil erosion control, water recharge, climate change mitigation and adaptation.
The project office has an organogram of 26 employees with project director as its chief. There are four scientific officers to assist the project director.
Presently there are no accurate statistics on the bamboo resources in terms of quantity in the country. A survey by the BFRI is now going on to come up with accurate data on bamboo which has 33 species.
But it is estimated that around 1.5 million tonnes of bamboo are now being supplied from the rural to urban areas each year.
jasimharoon@yahoo.com
