The Department of Agriculture Extension has taken up a programme to cultivate Boro paddy in 10 upazilas of the district during the current Rabi season.
The DAE office sources said, under the programme, a total of 174,774 hectares of land would be brought under Boro cultivation with the production target of 690,000 tonnes of paddy, reports BSS.
Of the total, 1 65,297 hectares of land would be brought under High Yielding Variety, 8,795 hectares under hybrid variety and 682 hectares of land would be brought under local variety of the paddy.
As part of the programme, a total of 11,417 hectares of land have been earmarked in the district by the DAE to set up seed beds.
Meanwhile, the farmers have already set up seed beds on over 5,000 hectares of land by spreading improved quality Boro seeds there, the sources said.
Meanwhile, the crop specialists and field-level officials of the DAE have started providing their field-level service to the cultivators following the directives of the government.
The concerned officials have also started visiting rural areas of the district to let the cultivators know about the latest methods of Boro cultivation and get the best yield by reducing production costs of the paddy, said Deputy Director DAE Kazi Nurul Islam.
The deputy director also said different state-run commercial banks, including Bangladesh Krishi Bank, have disbursed agri-loan to the farmers to make the cultivators capable of running their Boro cultivation.