Questions raised on how far Bogura spice centre's varieties reach farmers

The Spices Research Centre at Shibganj in Bogura listed 58 varieties of 27 spices among its innovations by November 2025, and its officers said it had also developed 66 improved technologies. Yet a Jagonews24 report published on 15 November 2025 said that ordinary people were seeing little benefit from them and that there was scant sign of them in the field. Farmers and extension officials it spoke to in Bogura said the varieties were not reaching them. The report asked how far the centre, which works under the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), was meeting its purpose. The centre's scientists answered that their varieties were grown widely, that national spice output had risen about twelvefold in three decades, and that they had no budget for extension work.

The report said most farmers did not know the names of the varieties the centre had bred. Officers of the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) could not give details of field cultivation beyond two or three spices. The Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corporation (BADC), the body responsible for storing and distributing seed, had bought no seed from the centre in the past two years, it said.

According to the report's own inquiries, papers for two or three new varieties were prepared in an average year, but there was no work plan or monitoring system to carry them to the field. About 95 per cent of the farmers the reporter spoke to said they had never met anyone from the centre. Touring the fields, the reporter found that apart from a few growers, most did not receive government seed and instead bought it at the market or saved it from the previous season's crop.

Two ginger growers in Sherpur upazila of Bogura said they received no government or research variety and did not know the names of any. They kept their own seed or bought it at the local market. They had heard that ginger was now being grown in sacks, they said, but the agriculture department had not yet shown them the method.

An official of the DAE said the centre did not send varieties to the department, so no training or demonstrations took place, and that without activity officers could not go to farmers. Sohel Md Shamsuddin Firoz, DAE deputy director in Bogura, said officers worked in the field with farmers in some cases. There was, however, no official tracking of how the varieties spread and no real example to show, he said, and motivation work happened through field officers only when funds came.

Komol Kanti Barman, BADC's acting deputy director (seed), said that although the corporation was linked with research of all kinds, spices were moving rather slowly. BADC had bought no spice seed from Bogura in 2024, he said, and the centre had not contacted it. The report added that training, demonstrations, field days and motivation work for farmers had been stopped for more than a decade. The centre's annual report for 2023-24, set out further down, records such work.

The local agriculture office told the reporter that the centre paid more attention to research than to supplying seed. The report said farmers were still growing varieties 20 to 30 years old, and that many believed output would rise, market pressure would ease and they would earn more if the centre's work spread widely, but that for various complications its seed never reached them.

Dr Ashikul Islam, a principal scientific officer at the centre, said its varieties were being grown in Pabna, Faridpur, Meherpur, Cumilla and even the Chittagong Hill Tracts. He said there was no budget beyond research, so extension work could not be done, and that the centre had no plots or outreach programme of its own for spreading varieties.

He described himself as the originator of growing ginger in sacks, calling it a modern method suited to the times that could yield large harvests from fallow and unused land, and said farmers were benefiting from it. The centre's March 2022 leaflet on the method lists him first among its authors.

According to the centre, its varieties were grown on a large scale at farm level. Besides varieties, it said, its 66 technologies covered intercropping, storage and processing, the control of diseases and insect pests, and the production of quality seed. Officials said the varieties were bred not only for yield but also for climate change, for drought-prone char land and for farmers with limited resources, and that several further research projects were under way to measure their effect on marketing and on farmers' social and economic condition.

When asked about the centre's annual budget, its chief scientific officer, Dr Zulfikar Haider Prodhan, declined to give figures. The report said that by government documents and earlier accounts, BARI's centres spent an average of Tk 2 to 3 crore a year on research, and that several sources at the centre confirmed its own budget at Tk 1.5 to 2 crore (Tk 15 to 20 million).

The report also called the centre's list of services a paper one. That list, which the centre publishes on its own website, has six items:

• distributing breeder seed of spice crops to government bodies such as BADC and the DAE, to non-government organisations and to farmers;
• telling the public about its varieties and technologies through leaflets, manuals and similar material;
• holding field days and farmer training;
• informing government and private organisations through meetings, training and workshops;
• solving farmers' problems through field visits or by telephone;
• giving spice seed and seedlings to areas hit by natural disasters.

Some of these activities did exist, the report said, but it found no large example in the field.

The centre's annual research report for 2023-24, published in December 2024, says it was established in November 1996, and The Daily Star gave the same year in 2016. The Jagonews24 report said it had worked since 1994. It stands about 17 kilometres north of Bogura town in Raynagar union of Shibganj upazila, beside Mahasthangarh, which Banglapedia describes as the earliest and largest archaeological site in Bangladesh, the ruins of the ancient city of Pundranagara on the Karatoya river. Its land of 28.38 hectares, 19.55 of them cultivable, represents the Karatoya-Bangali floodplain and the Level Barind Tract among the country's agro-ecological zones.

BARI itself dates back to an agricultural research laboratory set up in Dhaka in 1908. It took its present form in 1976, works under the Ministry of Agriculture from its central station at Joydebpur, and covers all crops except rice, jute, sugarcane and tea, which have institutes of their own. The Bogura centre has regional centres at Gazipur, Magura and Cumilla, and its annual report counts seven sub-centres, among them Lalmonirhat and Faridpur. It has seven divisions, from plant breeding and agronomy to farm engineering and agricultural economics. The report for 2023-24 shows 30 scientific posts at the centre and 21 scientific assistants.

The centre's stated vision is to raise the production and productivity of spice crops and to reduce dependence on imports. Its mission includes breeding high-yielding and stress-tolerant varieties, developing production and pest-control technology, cutting post-harvest losses, studying spice markets and, in its own words, contributing to social and economic development by transferring its varieties and technologies. Its website says research results pass to farmers through the DAE.

The report named chilli, ginger, garlic, turmeric, onion, coriander, cumin, fenugreek, fennel, black cumin, mustard and cardamom among the 27 crops. The count has moved over the years. In July and November 2016 The Daily Star reported 31 high-yielding varieties of 14 spices, with 84 production technologies. In February 2023 the same paper reported 51 varieties and 156 technologies. The annual report published in December 2024 counted 57 varieties of 27 crops, with 122 production technologies, 25 post-harvest technologies and 23 socio-economic studies. The centre's website, which gives 66 technologies, also gives 57 varieties. The figure of 58 is the one in the Jagonews24 report.

By the centre's own list the largest groups are seven of onion, six of chilli, five each of garlic and turmeric, three each of ginger, coriander, fenugreek and betel leaf, and two each of fennel, mint and ornamental chilli. The rest are single varieties of crops that include cumin, black cumin, cinnamon, bay leaf, black pepper and chui jhal. Those it reported as achievements of 2023-24 included BARI Roshun-5, a garlic with larger cloves and an average yield of about 9 to 10 tonnes a hectare, the coriander BARI Dhonia-3 and BARI Negi Onion-1, a type grown for its long white stem rather than a bulb.

Work on still more crops was continuing. The centre's website says about 47 local and foreign spice crops were under research, and a list of current work last updated in October 2022 showed 171 experiments in 10 projects. The last of those projects validated and transferred technology through trials of onion on char land and at homesteads, chilli in coastal areas, and garlic, ginger, cumin and coriander on farms.

The Jagonews24 report said it fell to BADC and the DAE to spread the varieties in the field. BADC, set up by ordinance in 1961 as a semi-autonomous body under the Ministry of Agriculture, runs seed multiplication farms and distributes farm inputs, with field offices down to the upazila. Banglapedia notes that its role has shrunk as irrigation, fertiliser and seed activities were privatised. The DAE, formed in 1982 by merging several farm directorates and boards, carries advice to farmers, and it has followed a national extension policy since 1996. The Seed Certification Agency, founded in 1974, certifies breeder and foundation seed.

The centre's own records show what it supplied. In 2023-24 it and its stations produced 36,092.09 kilograms of seed, bulbs and rhizomes across their crops and distributed 15,692.95 kilograms, along with 1,052,087 seedlings, cuttings and grafts out of 3,168,973 produced. The annual report names the recipients as the DAE, BADC, farmers, students, researchers and government officials.

The same report records 34 batches of workshops, training and field days that year, with 1,440 participants. They included 17 batches of farmer training for 510 people, nine field days attended by 550 people, and 70 demonstrations. At the Bogura station alone it lists 10 batches of farmer training, five field days and 21 demonstrations. In fiscal 2014-15, The Daily Star reported in 2016, the centre trained 1,830 farmers and 320 officers of the DAE, BADC and non-government organisations.

Concern about reach was not new. In 2016 the centre's then chief scientific officer told The Daily Star that the centre lacked quality germplasm for several spices, that spice seed was short and that few of its scientists had been trained abroad. The paper listed limited land, poor seed, weak storage at the grassroots and farmers moving from spices to vegetables and cereals among the constraints, and he urged the media, the DAE and BADC to encourage spice growing. In February 2023 a workshop at the DAE in Dhaka discussed a project on improved spice varieties and technology expansion, which aimed to raise production in its area by 5 per cent. The agriculture secretary said then that farmers would grow spices only if they made a profit.

Spice researchers quoted in the Jagonews24 report said spices were grown on about 429,000 hectares in Bangladesh, with output of about 3.593 million tonnes. They put total demand at 5.85 million tonnes and the remaining shortfall at 1.354 million tonnes, and they said the country spent an average of Tk 8,000 to 9,000 crore (Tk 80 to 90 billion) a year on imported spices. The centre's website gives the same area and output for the present against about 136,000 hectares and 300,000 tonnes in 1995-96, a rise in output it puts at 11.98 times.

Other published figures differ. In February 2023 a principal scientific officer at the centre said production was 4.93 million tonnes against the same demand of 5.85 million tonnes, so that about 15 per cent of demand had to be met by imports. He said that between 2000 and 2021 the area under spices had risen 1.7 times, yields 5.4 times and production 9.1 times. FAO data for 2022, quoted by The Daily Star in December 2023, put spice and aromatic crops at 4.8755 million tonnes, fourth in the world, and chillies at 624,825 tonnes, second. In 2016 the paper had reported output of over 1.8 million tonnes, up from 308,000 tonnes in 1996, and an import bill of over Tk 1,500 crore. BARI's then director general credited the better breeds developed by the centre for the rise.

Ginger shows how much the numbers vary. The annual report cites Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) data of 83,726 tonnes from about 10,400 hectares. BBS figures quoted by The Financial Express in January 2023 show output stuck near 80,000 tonnes for about a decade. The Business Standard, citing government data, gave about 192,000 tonnes for 2022-23 against demand above 300,000 tonnes, with 42 to 45 per cent imported. The centre's 2022 leaflet gave 288,000 tonnes from 17,000 hectares against demand of 481,000 tonnes. Ajker Patrika reported in November 2024 that imports had averaged about 138,000 tonnes a year over four fiscal years and fell to 91,000 tonnes in 2023-24.

The leaflet says the average national yield was 11.28 tonnes a hectare, while BARI Ada-1, BARI Ada-2 and BARI Ada-3 can yield 30 to 39 tonnes. It blames the shortfall on a lack of suitable land and on rhizome rot, a disease that can cut yields by 50 to 80 per cent. Grown in cement or similar sacks, it says, ginger needs no cropland, can stand on idle ground around homesteads and in new orchards, and any plant that falls sick can be taken away with its sack before the disease spreads. Planting is in April, ideally the first week, on high ground free of standing water, and the crop is lifted in January or February.

The leaflet put the cost at Tk 16 to 20 a sack in 2022 and the harvest at 1 to 3 kilograms depending on the variety. A trial at Shibganj between April 2023 and February 2024 gave the highest yield, 990.27 grams a bag, from equal parts of coco dust and soil, against 473.70 grams from soil alone. Newspaper reports gave higher costs. Ajker Patrika put them at Tk 50 to 60 and quoted the director of the improved spice varieties project as saying about 10.8 million sacks were under ginger in 2024, expected to give about 10,000 tonnes. The Daily Star reported in December 2024 that BARI-1 and BARI-2 seed had gone to farmers across the Rangpur region, according to the Lalmonirhat sub-centre, and that growers there lifted 1.5 to 2 kilograms a sack. The centre published a manual on the method in January 2024.

The Jagonews24 report said the prices of ginger, garlic and onion doubled every year around Eid-ul-Adha. It appeared in the middle of a separate onion price rise. Prothom Alo reported on 10 November 2025 that onions were selling at Tk 110 to 120 a kilogram in Dhaka, up from Tk 70 to 75 a month earlier. According to the Bangladesh Trade and Tariff Commission, it said, about 3.3 million tonnes of the 4.4 million tonnes produced in 2024-25 reached the market, and 483,000 tonnes were imported in the last fiscal year. The Daily Star reported on 8 November that the commission had urged the government to authorise imports.

Output figures for this crop are disputed as well. The Business Standard reported in August 2025 that the country had produced 4.245 million tonnes on 280,000 hectares in the previous season, the highest in its history. A principal scientific officer at the Bogura centre told the paper that production was about 3.6 million tonnes against demand of at least 4 million tonnes, and that about 25 per cent of onions were wasted in storage.

The centre's own trials speak directly to the question of adoption. A demonstration by its Faridpur sub-centre in the winter of 2023-24 gave an average of 20.01 tonnes a hectare with improved varieties and practices against 17.68 tonnes with farmers' traditional methods, 13.18 per cent higher. The annual report blames low national productivity mainly on mixed seed and traditional practices, and says the reason scientific technologies were not adopted was mainly inadequate and inappropriate extension. BARI Piaz-4 and BARI Piaz-6 can yield 25 and 23 tonnes a hectare, it says, and the gap between potential and farmers' yields was about 8 to 10 tonnes. BARI Piaz-5, which The Daily Star described in September 2020, was bred to give a crop in September and October, when supply runs short.

Garlic is short as well. The annual report sets annual demand of 772,000 tonnes against BBS production of 549,000 tonnes. BBS data quoted by The Daily Star in 2016 showed its area rising from 34,085 hectares in 2000-01 to 151,012 hectares in 2013-14.

The report also questioned research on crops it said had not succeeded in Bangladeshi soil, naming cardamom, fennel and black cardamom. Officials told the reporter that soil quality made it impossible to develop varieties of white and black cardamom. Asked why budget was still being spent on those spices year after year, they did not answer. One officer said that a crop being on the research list did not mean it would be cultivable. The centre's annual report shows no released variety of either cardamom, while it does list two fennel varieties, BARI Mouri-1 and BARI Mouri-2. Its website names better cardamom varieties among its future plans.

Cardamom's home is far from the Bogura plain. The green spice is native to southern India, and Nepal is the largest producer of black cardamom, according to Wikipedia. Banglapedia notes that many spices reach Bangladesh from India, Malaysia and Indonesia.

K G M Faruk, Bogura secretary of the Campaign for Good Governance (SUPRO), put the critics' case to the reporter. "Varieties are being developed in the laboratory, but they have no existence in farmers' fields. There is no extension plan, no budget and no monitoring. So technology built at a cost of crores of taka sits only in reports and on paper," he said. That, he said, naturally raised questions about the accountability and effectiveness of research bodies and about how far they matched the reality of farmers' lives.

Photo: ROCKY / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). The top picture shows the spice market at Dhap Sultanganj Hat in Dupchanchia, Bogura, as background.

Sources: Jagonews24 (15 November 2025), Spices Research Centre, BARI (website; Annual Research Report 2023-24, December 2024; leaflet on growing ginger in sacks, March 2022; manual, January 2024), The Daily Star (30 July and 11 November 2016; 25 September 2020; 8 February and 31 December 2023; 18 December 2024; 8 November 2025), The Business Standard (16 June 2024; 15 August 2025), The Financial Express (14 January 2023), Ajker Patrika (10 November 2024), Prothom Alo (10 November 2025), Banglapedia, Wikipedia