Bright prospect of strawberry farming in country

RAJSHAHI, Mar 12 (BSS): Growers' level extension of strawberry farming can bring a new horizon to the agriculture sector in Bangladesh. There has been a bright prospect of farming strawberry, highest-value crop, everywhere in the country excepting the coastal districts. Due attention should be given to motivate the farmers so that they could be encouraged for farming the crop commercially as it has high economic importance. Prof Dr Manzur Hossain, a teacher of Department of Botany of Rajshahi University (RU), pioneer in the country's strawberry research, variety innovation and growers' level farming expansion, depicted the prospect saying that the Bangladeshi variety has been adjudged as the world's best strawberry. We have innovated three varieties of strawberry through applying tissue culture method. In the demonstration field, all those were found adaptive to the country's soil and environmental conditions," Prof Hossain said. He has been growing of the variety on his own horticulture farm for the last couple of years. The red juicy and nutritious fruit produced by him is now being supplied to posh markets in the capital city. Strawberry cultivation is very easy and saplings can be planted in rows in the period between November and December. The plants start flowering within one month of plantation and fruits can be collected till March. Each plant bears around 250 to 300 grams of fruit and some 6000 plants can be grown on one bigha of land, Dr Manzur said. With farmer-level price of around Tk 200 per kg, the commercially potential fruit will have a bigger market locally and globally and benefit farmers enormously. The new variety of strawberry can be harvested within two and a half months of its plantation and a farmer can earn around Tk 0.15 million by farming it on one bigha of land with an expenditure of only Tk 30,000, he said. Besides being taken as a fruit, it has a good use in preparing around 100 processed items like ice-cream, jam, jelly, pickle, chocolate, biscuit, cake or milkshake. He stated that the cultivation process of the innovated varieties is similar to that of other vegetables like potato and brinjal, but market values of those are much higher. Around 700 farmers cultivated strawberry on around 100 hectares of land across the country this year and the yield might hit 1500 tonnes. In terms of taste and flavour, the developed varieties are many times higher than those being imported from abroad by spending huge hard-earned foreign currencies. He said, one kilogram of locally produced strawberry is being sold at Tk 100 to Tk 200 in different local markets while the current price in various posh-markets in the capital city is Tk 1000 to 1200. This year, many fresh initiatives were taken to develop the trade in Rajshahi, Panchagarh, Dinajpur, Tangail, Rangpur, Kurigram, Mymensingh, Noakhali, Laxmipur, Jessore, Magura, Faridpur, Madaripur, Srimangal and many areas around Dhaka. However, strawberry cultivation is still lacking initiatives from the government organisations, which resists expansion, although the trade was registered high in the country this year. "The fruit will no doubt be a profitable crop for farmers. If it is grown on a large scale, the highly nutritious fruit will come within the reach of the common people. There will be no need for imports," said Manzur.