Orange cultivation starts in Dinajpur

Courtesy The Financial Express

21.12.2009

Our Correspondent

NILPHAMARI, Dec 21: Commercial cultivation of Darjeeling variety of orange has started in greater Dinajpur, particularly in Panchagarh district.

Sources said, it is expected that the plants would bear fruit from 2011 and the cultivators would start supplying it across the country from the year 2013.

Now orange cultivation is spreading rapidly everywhere, specially in all the union parishads of Tetulia upazila in Panchagarh district. A single tree bears 200 to 500 oranges.

In the year 2003 ministry of agriculture directed Bangladesh

Agriculture Research Institute (BARI) to provide a feasibility study report on orange cultivation in the prospective districts. Consequently, greater Dinajpur was found to be feasible for it, the sources said.

Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE) has so far trained 1,500 farmers and provided them with orange saplings. In Panchagarh district there are 93 gardens in 108 hectares of land in which around 35,000 orange trees have grown.