Wide-ranging promotion of rice-wheat-mugbean cropping pattern in bed planting system could be the effective means of making yield of those double in the region including its vast barind tract.
Agricultural scientists and researchers told BSS that the on-farm research on the cropping pattern was conducted in different areas in the last couple of years and findings of those were seen very much optimistic.
Yearly gross return was found as Taka 1.5 lakh against the cost of Taka 70,320 per hectares of land in the high barind area.
“Raised beds enable sowing at the optimum time providing a means of better matching crop growth to water supply,” Dr Elias Hossain, Senior Scientific Officer of Regional Wheat Research Centre (RWRC) said here.
In the conventional system, the single largest constraint to wheat cultivation in the country is late planting in winter season as the delayed sowing reduce wheat yield due to its poor growth.
He, however, said bed planting might be an alternative for the region where wet farming is dominant. Bed planting has been detected as to improve water distribution and efficiency, competence in fertilizer and pesticide use, reduce weed infestation and crop lodging.
Some other salient features of the developed method included less use of irrigation, seeds, fertilizer and pesticides and no disturbance by rat. The farmers could save 30 per cent irrigation water and 30 to 40 percent seeds and fertilizer consumption in the method.
Evidence proves that yields can easily be improved if the cropping pattern is introduced among the grassroots farmers properly.
Dr Ilias observed that stepping up food production on per unit area using intensive cropping is indeed to feed the increasing population. Stressing the need for maintaining sound soil health he said rice may need to be grown under a different system in order to improve compatibility between monsoon rice and upland winter crops.
There has been a shift in economic importance toward the winter season crops over monsoon rice. The successful growth of rice on raised beds in northern Australia and in eastern Indonesia and high yielding irrigated wheat growing areas in Mexico and use of those practices has increased dramatically in the last decade.
Apart from this, the concept has been extended to eastern Indonesia where soybean, maize, sorghum, garlic, mugbeans and cassava are grown on raised bed in rotation with rice successfully.
RWRC Chief Scientific Officer Dr Israil Hossain said huge land remain fallow in the high barind tract after the harvest of transplanted aman every year and there has been a bright prospect of brining the land under wheat cultivation followed by mugbean through providing small irrigation facilities.
He said Bangladesh Rice Research Institute and Bangladesh Agriculture Research Institute (BARI) developed a number of varieties of rice, wheat and mugbean and those are being disseminated among the farmers through establishing projection plots in its bid to make the cropping pattern popular among those.
