Good orange yield in northern India
The climate and soil quality of Panchagarh and Thakurgaon districts are suitable for orange cultivation as the area is near Indian districts of Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri and Shiliguri where high quality oranges are grown for long, they said.
At present there are around 35,000 orange trees covering about 66 hectares of land in Thakurgaon district and around 41,000 trees on 73 hectares of land in Panchagarh.
Under five-year Orange Orchard Development Project, the government provided necessary support including quality saplings, trainings and technical help to the farmers till June 2011 and around 74 hectares of land in Thakurgaon and 104 hectares in Panchagarh have been brought under orange cultivation, said former officials of the project.
The project introduced Khashia, Nagpuri and Darjeeling varieties of orange in 2006 and around 20,000 farmers were provided training and over 1.5lakhs saplings were distributed among the people of the two districts.
But closure of ODP in 2011 affected orange cultivation, said agriculture officials and farmers.
"A new project titled 'Citrus Development Project' started work in May 2013. Under the project new saplings were distributed in a limited scale. But supervision of the old orchards is hampered due to shortage of manpower," said Bhupesh Kumar Mondal, deputy director of Thakurgaon DAE.
The farmers have urged revival of the project to help commercial cultivation of orange in the area. There is a bright prospect of orange cultivation in the upazila as weather and soil are suitable for it, said Nikhil Chandra Biswas, an agriculture expert now posted in Thakurgaon DAE.
The DAE has planned to arrange training for the interested orange farmers, said Dr Abul Kalam Azad, upazila agriculture officer of Birganj.
Source: thedailystar.net
