The New Nation - Internet Edition

BSS, Dhaka

Agriculture Adviser Dr CS Karim on Monday underscored the need for improving quality of fruits side by side with increasing its production to compete in the global market.

Addressing a national seminar on 'The cultivation of traditional and non-traditional fruits in food and nutrition security', Karim said the production of fruits and food grains has gone up in the country.

More research is needed to improve quality of fruits for increasing its exports, he added.

Chaired by Agriculture Secretary M Abdul Aziz, the seminar was addressed by Executive Chairman of BARC Mohammad Abdur Razzaque at the auditorium of Bangladesh Agriculture Research and Council (BARC) here.

Chief Scientific Officer (fruits) of Bangladesh Agriculture Research Institute (BARI) Dr Mohammad Jalil Bhuiyan presented a keynote paper.

Karim said "We have to produce varieties of crops and fruits keeping in mind the demand of the target group living abroad so that we can export it easily".

He laid stress on making concerted efforts to ensure agriculture production to meet the demand of food.

Karim said the government has increased fertilizer prices due to increasing price of fertilizer in the international market.

He said increase of fertilizer prices would not affect the agriculture sector as the government has increased different other facilities including providing of agriculture loan.

The adviser urged the BARC and concerned organizations to develop hybrid and super hybrid crops to increase food output.

In his keynote speech, Jalil Bhuiyan said presently 70 varieties of fruits are being produced in the country. Of them, 12 types of fruits are traditional and the rest 58 are non- traditional, he said.

He said about 19.36 lakh metric tonnes fruits are produced in the country.

Others speakers urged the government to set up a horticulture department in the country to increase fruits production, which would greatly help reduce food deficit.

They also put forward a set of recommendations including taking up a long-term action plan to enhance research and development activities, bringing more land under fruits cultivation and organising training for researchers, field workers and farmers.

Principal Scientific Officer of BRRI and Programme Coordinator of 'BRRI-Model Monga Mitigation Programme for Greater Rangpur' Dr Abdul Mazid told BSS that 19 lakh farm-labourers would get jobs by the year 2010 during the Monga period when the targeted land would be brought under BRRI DHAN-33 farming.

The farmers cultivated the paddy in 24,188 hectares last year with the help of the DAE, BRRI, RDRS, Inter-Cooperation Leaf, GAUS, Solidarity, Jibika, BRIF, Sharp, Uddog, Concern Worldwide Bangladesh and other partner NGOs to fight Monga in the area, he added.

He said a total of 3,81,633 farm labourers will get jobs everyday for 45 days during the peak hour of Monga when the targeted land would be brought under the BRRI DHAN-33 paddy farming and subsequent crop farming in the relay method by the end of the 2008-2010 Action Plan.

Harvesting periods of all crops will be advanced by at least 40 days in all seasons to enable farmers get more profits as farming of BRRI Dhan-33 would be followed by the relay-method cultivation of early variety crops potato, moog, vegetables, maize and mustard, he added.

The government has adopted this technology throughout the country not only to mitigate the seasonal job crisis of the farm labourers but also to increase the overall crop production for ensuring food security in the country.

They added that the technology could substantially minimize the irrigation requirements, save fuel and leave less negative impact on nature because of the new pattern of crop farming throughout the year.

They said the short-term paddy farming technology evolved by the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) could also increase overall crop production with less cost and reduced risk of natural calamities during cultivation.