Raihan Ahmed Ripon of Sujapur Baniapara in Phulbari municipality, Dinajpur, grows anarkali fruit alongside his freelance work. Two climbing vines on four decimals of land have given about 1,000 fruit in their first bearing, with hundreds more on the trellis.
He first ate the fruit at a Tk 50 roadside stall on a trip to Cox's Bazar. Seed he sowed gave weak plants that died. Last December he brought two saplings from Cox's Bazar for Tk 900, learned their care from YouTube and had fruit in seven months. Neighbour Mukti Chakraborty says this is the first such planting in the area.
Ripon says the plant needs organic fertiliser at planting, a spray or two against leaf rot and pheromone traps for flies once it flowers. Hand-transferring pollen from male to female flowers raises fruit set to as much as 80 per cent, he says, against 40 to 50 per cent otherwise. He says the vine bears all year except for three winter months and goes on for ten years.
The fruit now sells at Tk 50 each and Tk 600 a kilo, and wholesalers are coming to his house. He has raised more than 300 seedlings, sold at Tk 300 each, and is preparing to plant one bigha of his own. By his reckoning 15 to 20 plants fill a bigha and could earn Tk 15 lakh a year; that is the grower's own estimate and has not been tested in the field.
Saif Abdullah Mustafin, the upazila agriculture officer, says Phulbari's soil is very fertile and has already grown pineapple and even Saudi dates commercially.
Source: Amar Desh
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