Business Desk :
Food Minister Sadhan Chandra Majumder said the present government has been working relentlessly for reaching the mangoes being immensely produced in Sapahar upazila of the district to the global markets.
He said once upon a time the Sapahar area remained barren but now huge mangoes are being produced there and Sapahar has turned into a big mango market. The time has come to do branding of the tasty mangoes.
The food minister observed while addressing a mass-awareness workshop styled “Mango Production, Harvesting, Ripening, Transporting and
Marketing in Safe Way” here today as the chief guest. Bangladesh Safe Food Authority (BSFA) hosted the workshop at Sapahar Upazila Parishad conference hall largely attended by officials of line departments, development activists, business leaders, mango farmers and other stakeholders. The capacity-building project of the Bangladesh Food Safety Authority project supported the workshop.
BSFA Chairman Kaiyum Sarker, Member Rezaul Karim, Director of the project
Monzur Murshed Ahmed and Deputy Director of the Department of Agricultural Extension Shamsul Wadud also spoke with Upazila Nirbahi Officer Abdullah Al Mamun in the chair. Dr Alim Uddin, principal scientific officer of the Regional Fruit Research Station, gave an illustration of the issue during his keynote presentation.
He told the meeting that modern technologies are being promoted commercially in mango orchards here during the pre-harvest season to protect mangoes from pest attacks, enabling the farmers to get better yield. Food Minister Sadhan Majumder urged the growers to produce mango safely after the best use of the knowledge acquired from the workshop so that their produced mangoes are appropriated for exporting. Kaiyum Sarker mentioned that modern technologies need to be promoted commercially in mango orchards in the region during the harvesting season for facilitating the farmers to get quality and better yield and price. Mango is a leading seasonal cash crop of the country’s northwest region and dominates the economy in the two districts famous for the delicious fruit.
Terming the seasonal fruit as an important cash crop, he viewed that more than 60 per cent of people in the region are directly or indirectly dependent on mango.
He said there are about 30 lakh mango trees of different varieties on some 32,816 hectares of land in the region. “We need to be careful when harvesting, which is an important part of demonstrating good practices,” he added. If modern technologies were promoted substantially and the use of chemical insecticides and pesticides could be reduced to a greater extent, the modern method will open up a new door for exporting mangoes of the region to various foreign markets.
