BSS, Rangpur :
Agriculture experts at a crop cutting ceremony have stressed for expanded cultivation of the off-season, short duration and indigenous parija rice as an additional Aus crop for attaining national food security.
RDRS Bangladesh organised the crop cutting ceremony of parija rice at a farmers’ field day at the field of farmer Mohsin Ali at Dhanonjoypur village under Bochaganj upazila in Dinajpur on Monday afternoon.
With local Rongaon union chairman Prantosh Chandra Debsarma in the chair, Deputy Director of the Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE) for Dinajpur Abdul Hannan attended the ceremony as the chief guest.
Plant Protection Specialist of the DAE Sudeb Chandranath Roy, Bochaganj Upazila Agriculture Officer Safikul Islam, Assistant Coordinator (Agriculture) of RDRS Bangladesh Syeda Nuhera Begum addressed as the special guests.
President of Rongaon Union Federation of RDRS Bangladesh Azaharul Islam, farmers Mohsin Ali, Abdus Salam and Noor Nahar and local journalist Shamsul Alam also spoke on the occasion participated by 150 male and female farmers.
After harvesting the crop, farmer Mohsin Ali got excellent yield rate of 3.6 tonnes of parija paddy per hectare and said that nationwide expanded cultivation of short duration (100-100 days) rice as an additional Aus crop could increase rice output.
Experts of the NGO said it has taken an extensive programme for parija rice farming on 3,300 bigha lands adopting the ‘early Aman rice-mustard-mug bean-parija’ cropping pattern evolved by RDRS Bangladesh during this Aus season in Rangpur division.
The NGO has distributed 16,500 kg parija seeds among 3,300 farmers for cultivation of parija rice in Rangpur, Gaibandha, Nilphamari, Thakurgaon, Lalmonirhat, Kurigram, Dinajpur and Panchagarh districts in the division.
The experts said that farmers are now getting four crops annually from the same land through cultivating and completing harvest of parija rice by mid-August without hampering Aman cultivation adopting the newer cropping pattern.
The chief guest suggested the farmers for expanding parija cultivation that requires no supplementary irrigation as its plants grow well making the best use of unused seasonal rain waters during the months of May, June and July to produce additional rice.
