The New Nation - Internet Edition

BSS, Rajshahi

Various types of rabi crops like vegetables, potato, garlic, wheat, gram and maize could be made more profitable if the cultivation BARKHE-3004 variety of rice could be expanded at farmers level during aman season in the region.

Scientists and some successful farmers revealed this at a meeting titled "Crop-cutting of BARKHE-3004 and field day-2007" jointly arranged by Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE) and People's Resource Oriented Voluntary Organisation (PROVA) at Raninagar village under Godagari upazila here on Thursday.

In addition to scientists and extension workers, around 200 farmers attended the crop-cutting ceremony. Country Director of IRRI Bangladesh Dr Joynul Abedin and Deputy Director of DAE Rabindra Kumar Majumder addressed the ceremony as the chief guest and special guest respectively with Godagari DAE Officer Mosharraf Hossain in the chair.

PROVA Executive Director Abu Muhammad Musa in his speech highlighted the various features of the variety and said its grain is long and slender. It is a short duration crop and its life-span is on an average 120 days, which is one month less than that of other varieties.

He said being a short duration crop, the farmers could adjust its time of planting and go for rabi crops especially wheat, vegetables, potato and maize. Therefore, he said, inclusion of this variety in transplanted aman cropping pattern, it has a vital role to formation of crop-diversification system.

The average yield is 18-22 mounds per bigha, which is also encouragong. Flag leaves are wide and erect that does not lodged easily. So it could be cultivated as an early crop in a very cost- effective way.

After cultivation of transplanted aman in the deep tube-well commanding area, cultivation of some cash crops like potato, wheat, maize and vegetables have already become very popular in some areas of the region.

However, in most of the cases cultivation and production of rabi crops are delayed due to the cultivation of long term transplanted aman cultivation. Farmers could easily cultivate the advanced variety rice BARKHE-3004 to overcome the problem and fetch a good economic return in this field.

Referring to the gradual declining of cultivable land the speakers said there is no alternative of crop diversification to increase annual crop production in the limited land to meet the national demand. Farmers could play a vital role in this regard.