Work on to cultivate crops twice or thrice a year in saline prone areas: Razzaque
The government have been working to cultivate crops twice or thrice a year in the saline prone areas of coastal and southwestern parts of the country, Agriculture Minister Muhammad Abdur Razzaque said today.
About 25 per cent of the country's area is coastal and only one crop was cultivated throughout the year due to the salinity, he said.
"For the rest of the year after harvesting Aman paddy, all the fields were left idle. We have been working on how to cultivate crops twice or thrice a year in this unfavourable environment," he said.
The minister was inspecting the early cultivation of bean, off-season watermelon and chilli on the embankment of shrimp firms in Khulna's Dumuria Upazila.
"In the meantime, our agricultural scientists have been able to develop salinity tolerant improved varieties of many crops including paddy, pulses, watermelon, potato, maize, barley, sunflower and vegetables," he said.
So, work is underway to rapidly expand these varieties and production technologies among all farmers in the vast coastal areas, Razzaque said. "To this end, a roadmap is being prepared."
He also said the government is planning to dig or re-excavate more than 600 canals in Khulna and Bagerhat to alleviate the problem of irrigation water.
According to the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), the total land in the coastal area is 28.30 lakh hectares in the country, of which 21. 62 lakh hectares are cultivable.
The amount of saline area is 10.56 lakh thousand hectares and over 5 lakh hectares of land in the coastal areas remain uncultivated during the dry season every year due to the adverse effect of saline water.
As per the survey of the Institute of Soil Research and Development (SRDI), out of the total 213,000 hectares of cultivable land in Khulna, the amount of saline land is 190,000 hectares. Which is 89 per cent of the total cultivable land.
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