Early Katimon mangoes from Chapainawabganj meet Ramadan demand

In early March 2026, with Ramadan under way, early-fruiting Katimon mangoes from Chapainawabganj were selling in the district's markets weeks before the main mango season. Jagonews24 reported on 2 March 2026 that while most orchards in the district known as the country's "mango capital" were still in blossom, a few exceptional orchards already had Katimon fruit hanging on the trees, and that demand for these early mangoes had multiplied with the holy month.

Spring in Chapainawabganj means mango trees covered in golden blossom and fresh leaves, and the scent of the flowers in the air. In late February and early March 2026 farmers were busy looking after their orchards: protecting the blossom, spraying, irrigating and keeping the orchards clean. Against that background, green and ripening Katimon mangoes on a handful of orchards had already drawn a strong response from buyers.

Ramadan 1447 Hijri began in Bangladesh on Thursday, 19 February 2026. The National Moon Sighting Committee took the decision at a meeting at the Islamic Foundation at Baitul Mukarram National Mosque on the evening of 18 February, after the new moon was sighted in Netrokona, Sirajganj and Cox's Bazar, BSS reported that day.

One of the orchards in the report belongs to Habibur Rahman, a resident of Shibganj upazila, who leased 40 bighas of land in Ghion village of Nachole upazila and planted Katimon mangoes there. With proper pruning, fertiliser applied on time, disease control and regular supervision, his trees were already bearing fruit by early March, with large green Katimon mangoes hanging in clusters.

Habibur Rahman said he hoped to sell about Tk 30 lakh worth of mangoes that season, and that because of the demand for early mangoes around Ramadan, prices were relatively high. "If you can catch the early market, the profit is higher. The yield is good this year and I am getting good prices too. I hope to exceed my target," he told Jagonews24.

He was not alone. According to the report, many other farmers in the district were turning to Katimon. They said the variety bears fruit relatively quickly, that the height of the trees can be kept under control and that it suffers less from disease. Sweet, low in fibre and attractive to look at, it had found wide acceptance in the market, and with demand for fruit at iftar rising during Ramadan, its sales had grown further.

Nachole, where the orchard stands, is an upazila of 283.67 square kilometres in the east of the district, bounded by Gomastapur, Nawabganj Sadar, Tanore and Niamatpur upazilas. Banglapedia lists mango first among its main fruits, alongside jackfruit, litchi, blackberry, palm, coconut, watermelon and plum, and records agriculture as the main source of income for 73.27 per cent of its households. Shibganj, where Habibur Rahman lives, is the district's largest upazila and its main exports, by the same reference, include mango.

Katimon (also spelt Catimon) is a mango variety from Thailand that is grown in Bangladesh for its ability to flower and fruit more than once a year. The Daily Star reported in September 2022 that local entrepreneurs had brought the variety from Thailand about six years earlier and that it had quickly adapted to the local climate. Its trees are small: in an orchard in Rajshahi's Durgapur upazila, the paper found trees no more than six feet tall, some of them already carrying fruit when barely a year old while others were flowering or budding.

Agricultural scientists describe the variety's habit in the same terms. Experts told The Business Standard in September 2023 that the exotic variety carries fruit and flowers or buds at the same time, giving a yield three to four times a year against the single crop of conventional varieties, and Dr Shafiqul Islam, principal scientific officer of the Regional Fruit Research Station, said the same to BSS in September 2025. BSS reported then that, unlike conventional varieties whose single harvest usually runs from May to mid-August, Katimon trees can fruit several times a year, which gives growers an income outside the usual three to four month harvest window. Another advantage noted in these reports is that Katimon mangoes keep longer than other varieties.

The variety was still new on the eve of the 2026 season, and official voices were cautious. BSS wrote in September 2025 that Katimon is a newer, exotic variety compared with the long-established mangoes of the region and that its large-scale commercial feasibility was still being explored, and that scientists were researching it to understand its potential for disease and its suitability for the region. In 2022 Mozdar Hossain, then deputy director of the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) in Rajshahi, told The Daily Star that the additional management costs of year-round production could make the variety commercially unviable, and suggested that farmers grow BARI-11 instead.

The Department of Agricultural Extension recorded Katimon on 700 hectares across the country in 2021-22, of which 523 hectares were in the four districts of the Rajshahi region: Rajshahi, Naogaon, Chapainawabganj and Natore. The fruit was also being grown in Dinajpur, Rangpur and Thakurgaon, and about 250 farmers were growing it at that time, The Daily Star reported. Many growers had set up nurseries beside their orchards to sell Katimon saplings. Even so, the variety then accounted for less than 1 per cent of the country's annual mango production.

The care that farmers were giving their orchards at the time of the report follows the mango tree's calendar. According to Banglapedia, mango flowers are borne in large terminal panicles, each of which may hold 100 to 250 flower buds, and only about one or two flowers out of a thousand may become a mature fruit. Fruit setting is adversely affected by fog, rain or cloudy weather in January to March, when the trees flower. Mild showers while the fruit is developing are beneficial, but storms, and hailstorms in particular, can cause immature fruit to drop.

The same reference records that about three dozen insect pests attack mango plants in Bangladesh from the nursery stage to maturity, among them mango hoppers, fruit weevils, stem and shoot borers and the fruit fly, and that fungal diseases such as anthracnose, sooty mould, leaf blight, die-back and powdery mildew cause considerable damage. Infested blossom bears few or no fruit. Mango hopper and anthracnose are the main enemies of the crop, agriculturists told Prothom Alo in 2020. Farmers who need advice on spraying or pest control should consult their upazila agriculture officer.

At the New Market fruit bazaar in Chapainawabganj town, Jagonews24 found Katimon mangoes on sale beside other fruit, and consumers buying them along with other fruit for iftar.

Faruk Ahmed Chowdhury, a resident of West Pathanpara in the town, said: "Mango is a wonderful gift of nature. Its juicy taste soothes not only the palate but also the mind. When you eat a cold mango first at iftar after a hot afternoon, the taste is truly unique. So I bought a kilogram of mangoes for Tk 300."

Ruhul Ali, a fruit seller in the New Market area, said: "Since the start of Ramadan, demand for Katimon mangoes has risen noticeably. Buyers come every day to buy these juicy mangoes, and for iftar especially they are giving Katimon priority alongside other fruit."

The general secretary of the Shibganj Mango Producer Co-operative Society Limited told Jagonews24 that early in the season the market used to depend on foreign mangoes. "Now that Katimon is produced in the country, the need for imports has fallen considerably. This saves foreign currency, and local farmers and traders are benefiting too," he said. The report did not give import figures to support the point, and it is presented here as his view.

Early and out-of-season mangoes had been finding buyers during Ramadan in several parts of the country in the years before 2026, and earlier reports show how the holy month has become a selling season for growers of year-round varieties. In March 2023 bdnews24.com reported from Sharsha upazila in Jessore that a grower of BARI-11 and Katimon year-round mangoes was selling his fruit at Tk 400 a kilogram; he had planted a three-bigha Katimon orchard in 2018 with the advice of the local agriculture department and started picking from January. In March 2025, in another Ramadan, the same paper reported that he was selling at Tk 350 a kilogram and had targeted the fasting month. Sharsha's upazila agriculture officials told the paper that BARI-4, BARI-11 and Katimon trees give three crops a year and that farmers were getting good prices because the fruit arrives out of season; officials put the upazila's mango area at 959 hectares, with Katimon on 2 hectares.

A few days before the Chapainawabganj report, on 23 February 2026, Prothom Alo described green mangoes on sale in Teknaf in Cox's Bazar at Tk 500 to 550 a kilogram, with many fasting buyers paying the high price during Ramadan. That fruit was a local year-round type grown in Teknaf's humid coastal climate rather than Katimon, according to the Teknaf upazila agriculture officer, who told the paper that "there is a year-round Katimon variety in the country" that fruits throughout the year, and that the Teknaf mango behaved similarly.

In September 2023, after the main season had ended, Katimon was selling at Tk 8,000 a maund, or Tk 200 a kilogram, in Rajshahi, The Business Standard reported, and BSS reported in September 2025 that a Shibganj grower with more than 6,000 Katimon trees in orchards in Rajshahi's Tanore and Godagari upazilas was selling at Tk 150 to 170 a kilogram. Prices in the Ramadan market of early 2026, as the Jagonews24 report found, were well above those off-season levels.

Katimon is not the only mango that fruits more than once a year in Bangladesh. The Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI) developed its own year-round variety, BARI Aam-11, at its research centre in Pahartali, Chattogram. After several years of research, it was registered by the National Seed Board in June 2014, Prothom Alo reported in December 2020. According to research sources cited by the paper, BARI Aam-11 flowers and fruits throughout the year, with relatively heavy flowering and fruiting at three periods: February to March, May to June and August to September. The fruit is medium-sized, weighs 300 to 350 grams, grows in clusters of five to six and turns yellow when ripe, and its sweetness was measured at 18.55 per cent.

Md Sharfuddin, then a senior scientific officer in fruit research and horticulture at BARI, told Prothom Alo in 2020 that both Thailand's Katimon and BARI-11 were being cultivated. He said BARI-11 is a moderately tasty mango that has a little fibre when it fruits in June and July but none when it fruits out of season in winter, when it also fetches a good price. The paper reported that Katimon had then been grown in Chapainawabganj, Rajshahi and other places for four to five years, and that scientists rated the home-grown BARI-11 ahead of it for quality and productivity.

Local agriculture officers have also described the two varieties together. In February 2025, an upazila agriculture officer in Natore's Bagatipara told Jugantor that Katimon or BARI-11 mangoes come three times a year in the country. In August 2022 BSS reported from Meherpur that Thai Katimon saplings planted on two bighas in early 2021 were already carrying blossom, young fruit and mature fruit on the same trees, describing the fruit as having a small stone and no fibre, and the Sadar upazila agriculture officer said steps had been taken to spread the variety to farmers through research.

Katimon has also reached export markets in small quantities. In August 2023 a Rajshahi-based exporter sent at least 300 kilograms of mangoes to Russia, including 100 kilograms of Katimon, collected from an orchard in Kundua village of Nachole upazila, The Daily Star reported. The grower told the paper that Gourmoti and Katimon fruit through the year, but are picked in August and September for the best profit, when the season for other varieties has ended.

Chapainawabganj lies in the Rajshahi division on the country's north-western border. According to Banglapedia, the district covers 1,702.55 square kilometres and is bounded by the Indian state of West Bengal on the north, south and west, and by Rajshahi and Naogaon districts on the east. Its land is made up of Barind tract, diara and char lands, and its main rivers are the Padma, the Mahananda and the Pagla. Nawabganj was a thana of Maldah district until 1947, became a subdivision of Rajshahi district at partition and was made a district in 1984. Of its five upazilas, Shibganj is the largest, covering 525.43 square kilometres, and Kansat Hat in Shibganj is among the upazila's best-known markets.

The district is often called the mango capital. BSS reported in June 2025 that Dr Yeasin Ali, deputy director of the DAE in Chapainawabganj, had set a target of producing around 3.86 lakh tonnes of mangoes from 37,504 hectares that year, with a market value of around Tk 4,000 crore. The same report described the Barind tract's naturally red, undulating soil, where around 15 to 20 years earlier only rice could be grown, and named Shibganj, Nachole and Gomastapur as upazilas of the district where mango orchards had spread over hundreds of acres.

According to the DAE, Chapainawabganj and Naogaon are the country's top two mango-producing districts, Prothom Alo reported in July 2023, with Chapainawabganj well known for Khirsapat, also called Himsagar. In April 2023 the paper reported that Chapainawabganj orchards yield 8 to 9 tonnes a hectare, against 15 to 18 tonnes in Naogaon. A study by researchers from BARI, Khulna University of Engineering and Technology, Saint Mary's University in Canada and an Indian Institute of Technology, published in the journal Sustainability and reported by Prothom Alo in April 2023, placed Natore, Rajshahi and Chapainawabganj in a zone where mangoes ripen later than in the south and east of the country.

Three of the district's mangoes carry geographical indication (GI) status. Khirsapat mango of Chapainawabganj was registered as a GI product on 27 January 2019, when a certificate was handed to BARI's Horticulture Research Centre, The Daily Star reported that day. The Department of Patents, Designs and Trademarks awarded GI certificates to Chapainawabganj's Langra and Ashwina mangoes on 25 June 2023, its deputy registrar told The Daily Star in July 2023. BARI also runs a mango research station in the district: Banglapedia notes that BARI's horticulture division has established orchards and research stations at Rajshahi, Nawabganj and Joydebpur to study propagation, production and post-harvest technology.

Mango is the most widely produced fruit in Bangladesh, and the government has declared the mango tree the national tree. By the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics' count, more than 12 lakh tonnes of mangoes were produced in 2021-22, with jackfruit second at about 10.5 lakh tonnes; the DAE's figures are higher, putting production in 2021-22 at about 23.5 lakh tonnes, of which 6 lakh tonnes were Amrapali, Prothom Alo reported in July 2023. The paper noted that the two bodies' production figures differ. In April 2023 the DAE expected 25 lakh tonnes from 2 lakh hectares that year, after 23 lakh tonnes from 1.7 lakh hectares the year before.

Researchers have counted more than 800 mango varieties in the country, of which 21 are grown commercially, the same report said. The season for most of them is short. The principal scientific officer of the agricultural research centre in Chattogram told Prothom Alo in 2020 that the fruit season of May to August supplies 60 per cent of the country's fruit, while the other eight months together supply 40 per cent, a gap he said wide cultivation of BARI-11 was showing the way to fill. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), as cited by Prothom Alo in April 2023, mango is the most popular and important commercial crop of South Asia, a region that grows about 80 per cent of the world's mangoes.

Mango trees grow throughout Bangladesh, mostly as homestead plantations, and the country's superior varieties are grown mainly in Rajshahi, Nawabganj and Dinajpur, according to Banglapedia. Grafted trees begin to bear fruit in the fourth year after planting and remain productive to about their 45th year. The optimum soil pH for mango ranges from 5.5 to 7.5, and the tree flourishes where there is enough rain to wet the soil to a good depth and a well-defined dry season.

Dr Yasin Ali, deputy director of the Department of Agricultural Extension in Chapainawabganj, told Jagonews24 that farmers were being given technical support, training and advice to expand Katimon cultivation. Awareness was being raised about modern orchard management, safe use of pesticides, and methods of harvesting and storing the fruit, he said. According to the department, if cultivation is expanded in a planned way, Katimon mangoes can make an important contribution to the country's economy.

Photo: NahidHossain / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Sources: Jagonews24, BSS, Dhaka Tribune, The Daily Star, The Daily Star Bangla, The Business Standard, Prothom Alo, bdnews24.com, Jugantor, Banglapedia