The New Nation - Internet Edition

Our Correspondent, Chittagong

Orange gardeners here in the uplands and prairies of Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) have started seeing the ray of hope as experts joined them hands in orchard supervision and production management.

Orange cultivation in the hills had been unsupervised from the very beginning. Enthusiasm in developing orange orchard began dipping down over the last couple of years mainly on the grounds that the sour oranges would never make a good market.

Despite the bad experience of the local orange growers, experts believe that the existing orchards in the hills will start giving top quality oranges if necessary supervision and technical know-how are delivered to the orchard people. A recent report said that Director of Orange Development Project at Khamarbari in Dhaka MA Salam had come forward to guide the orange growers in the hills.

The orange orchard expert joined a colloquium of local orange cultivators, orchard owners and the local officials of agricultural department and shared the knowledge on growing top quality oranges.

Earlier, he went around a number of orange orchards in the area and examined the size and quality of the produce. Officials of the Orange Development Project - Pranab Chattachariya, Sawpan Kumar Barua and Agricultural Extension official at Dhighinala Mohammad Tajul Islam Patwari also accompanied the project director.

MA Salam observed that top quality oranges worth more than Taka two million would easily be grown alone from each acre of orange orchard a year especially in the hill weather, excellent for growing descent and tasty oranges.

"Untimely procuring of oranges, less or no nursing of plants and unplanned development of orchards are the main reasons of poor quality or sour orange production," MA Salam told the orange growers and advised them not to take the oranges down from the plants until they got the color in true sense.

More than 20 orange orchards had been developed in the hills of Bandarban, Khagrachari and Rangamati nearly a decade ago.