Farmers of Rajshahi region are expecting a good yield of mustard as they have got agri-output and seeds in time and favourable climatic conditions also helped them during cultivation.
According to local sources, the cash crop is now growing well everywhere in the region, including its vast Barind tract.
More farmers are interested to cultivate the crop as they got excellent yield and market price during the last harvesting season when most of the big corporate organisations purchased mustard seed from farmers directly.
According to Department of Agriculture Extension, harvest of the mustard will begin next month. After that, farmers will start cultivation of boro paddy on the same quantity of land.
The DAE has set a target of bringing 177,885 hectares of land in eight districts of the region during the current season but the farmers cultivated the crop on 174,951 hectares of land.
Besides the DAE, various other research and development organisations like BARI, BARC, BADC and many NGOs have taken adequate steps in collaboration with other departments this season to achieve the fixed production targets.
BARI has released 16 high yielding mustard seeds and two of those- BARI Sharisha-15 and Tari-7 have become popular among the growers’ level, particularly in barind tract comprising 25 upazilas of Rajshahi, Chapainawabganj and Naogaon districts.
The DAE and NGOs have provided quality seeds, necessary inputs and trainings on the latest technologies to farmers so that they could cultivate the oil seed on their land without any hassle.
The landless and marginal farmers have also brought vast tracts of the sandy char land under mustard cultivation in the Ganges basins and the crops are growing excellent everywhere now in the region.
Deputy Director of DAE, Rajshahi Nurul Amin and Principal Scientific Officer of Regional Wheat Research Centre Dr Israil Hossain said the region had immense prospects to achieve self-reliance in oil seed productions.
In this regard, they underscored the need for using the latest agro-technologies and disseminating proper knowledge to the farmers for increasing mustard seed to achieve self-reliance in edible oil to reduce the dependence on import.
They laid emphasis on the need for increasing mustard, groundnuts, soybean and palm farming to move further forward in achieving the goals using the latest agro-technologies in the country’s food granary of the northern region.
