The New Nation - Internet Edition

BSS, Rangpur

Plantation of T-Aman seedlings has been still continuing smoothly though the farmers have already brought over 98 percent of the targeted land under farming of the crop everywhere in the 16 northern districts of the country.

Despite some less rainfall during the current season, there are possibilities of exceeding the fixed T-Aman farming target by at least five percent this year in the region, officials in the Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE) said here today.

A target of producing 43.30 lakh tonnes T-Aman rice from 17.38 lakh hectares has been fixed for the sixteen northern districts this season and the farmers have already brought over 17.10 lakh hectares by Thursday and the plantation will continue till this month.

Deputy Director (DD) of DAE, Rangpur Kamal Shariful Alam told BSS that the farmers already planted T-Aman seedlings in 10.13- lakh hectares land by Thursday against the fixed target of 10.22 lakh hectares to produce 27.39-lakh tonnes rice in eight districts under Rangpur Agriculture Zone (RAZ) this season. A similar progress has been achieved in the other eight districts under the Rajshahi Agriculture Zone in the region, DAE sources said.

Chief of Rangpur Regional Research Station of Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) and its Chief Scientific Officer Dr Abdul Mazid told BSS that the concerned departments should have preparations to provide supplementary irrigation to the T- Aman fields, if necessary, due to the comparatively les rainfalls this year.

The climatic conditions are still favourable for smooth T- Aman farming as moderate to heavy rainfalls have been showering in recent days in the region and presently there are adequate waters in the growing paddy fields everywhere, the DAE and BRRI experts said.

The senior agri-experts said the T-Aman production target would be exceeded as the farmers have been cultivating the High Yielding Variety (HYV) and Hybrid Variety (HV) T-Aman paddies in over 96 percent land being brought under T-Aman farming.

Though the average yield rate of T-Aman rice has been fixed at 2.68 tonnes per hectare land this year in the RAZ, the overall yield rate may be around 2.80 tonnes per hectare due to farming of HYV and HV on more and more lands, they said.

"We are now more educated to adapt ourselves with any kind of situation like droughts and fertiliser prices etc to produce all varieties of crops in all seasons every year and this time, the production cost of T-Aman may be higher than the normal because of the double fertiliser prices," some farmers told here today.

"Prices of urea, TSP and MoP fertilisers are double this year than that of the last year, but less fertilisers are needed while farming T-Aman paddy than that of the Boro crop and there is no crisis of fertilisers and pesticides anywhere," DD Kamal Shariful Alam added.