Strawberry farming in Bangladesh
Strawberry is one of the top 10 agricultural crops in California with a fresh market of more than $ 1 billion per year. So there is a huge opportunity for marketing it around the world as well in Bangladesh because recently it has been cultivating in Bangladesh and expanding its cultivation day by day. It could easily achieve self-reliance in strawberry production to save foreign exchange being spent every year in importing this costly fruits.
In Bangladesh Dr. Monjur Hossain, Professor of the Department of Botany at Rajshahi University first launched the strawberry farming using tissue culture method of his own nursery premises. The research team has so far evolved three varieties of strawberry including RB-1, RB-2 and RB-3 and all of these three varieties are suitable for farming in Bangladesh.
As part of the programme "I experimentally cultivated strawberry through the technical support of Plan Bangladesh-BRIF partnership project in Khansama upazila and became successful" said Mr. Hafiz, farmer of Angarpara Union under Khansama Upazilla. He is vegetable grower and has fruit garden at Nomirhajee para under Angarpara union of Khansama Upazilla, successfully cultivated strawberry on 6 decimal lands of his household premises. He also mentioned that we are getting technical support from Plan Bangladesh since 2005 to increase crop production through enhancing our knowledge and skills. In Khansama Upazilla strawberry is a completely new fruit. Maximum people do not know about this fruit and its nutrition value. We have cultivated strawberry as a piloting; this has been only possible for Plan Bangladesh because all necessary technical support to cultivate the strawberry provided by participatory Ago-Product Diversification Project (APDP) through Plan BRIF partnership project.
At present success in strawberry cultivation in Khansama Upazilla in Dinajpur has created enthusiasm among the local farmers to go for massive cultivation of this sweet and nutritious fruit and the prospect of strawberry cultivation has been proved as bright in the district.
The people of Dinajpur could get strawberry sapling very easily after successful research works at the Strawberry Nursery Research Project (SNRP) under the leadership of Professor Dr. Monjur and Plan Bangladesh is facilitating to establish an effective linkage between farmer/partner NGOs and the research team of Professor Monjur.
Strawberry looks like litchis in Bangladesh it contains huge vitamins and minerals. It sapling is generally planted in comparatively high land having sunshine and dewatering facilities and can be sown in rows in November and December and strawberry usually grows in the countries where witner prevails most of the time. Now it is proved that the soil and climate of Dinajpur are suitable for large scale strawberry cultivation and added efforts are being made in Dinajpur to give a new dimension as well as crop diversification to our agro-economy.
After successfully completion of strawberry piloting cultivation in Khansama Upazilla, it has been revealed that farmers are very pleased to cultivate the nutritious and delicious foreign fruit as well the resource farmers group has interested to continue the strawberry cultivation in next. They gave thanks to Plan Bangladesh for their nice support to the farmer.
