Jaishtha's Juicy Fruits: Mango, Jackfruit, Jam and Litchi Fill Bangladesh's Markets

On 6 June 2026, the 23rd of Jaishtha 1433 in the Bengali calendar, the online newspaper Jagonews24 ran a feature titled "Juicy fruits fill the air with sweet fragrance" by Dr Md Forkan Ali, a researcher and former college principal. He described how, in Jaishtha, the last month of summer, mango, jam (black plum), jackfruit, litchi and many other local fruits ripen and fill the markets of Bangladesh's villages and towns, and how the season brings family visits, fruit festivals and a burst of seasonal trade. He closed with a warning that some dishonest traders treat fruit with chemicals to ripen it faster and make it look glossy.

The piece appeared at the height of the mango season. In Rajshahi, picking had begun on 15 May, the first day of Jaishtha, and Dinajpur's litchi markets had come alive at the start of June. This report sets out the writer's account together with figures and background from government agencies, research bodies and newspapers on the month's four main fruits and on the markets at the time. Points in the column that other sources did not support, or contradicted, have been corrected or left out.

Jaishtha is the second month of the Bengali calendar, after Baishakh; together the two make up Grishma, the summer season. In the calendar used in Bangladesh, Jaishtha has 31 days and falls across May and June. In 2026 its first day was 15 May. The month takes its name from the Jyeshtha star.

Dr Ali wrote that because no other month brings so much fruit, many people call Jaishtha 'Madhumas', the honey month. In his account, though, the dictionary meaning of Madhumas is Chaitra, the spring month when trees fill with flowers and the cuckoo calls. In common use Jaishtha is the month known by that name. The daily Samakal called it Madhumas in a feature on 6 June 2022, and Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS), the state news agency, reporting on Dinajpur's litchi market on 1 June 2026, described litchi trading at its peak "in Jaishtha, known as the honey month".

The fruits the writer lists for Jaishtha include, besides mango, jam, jackfruit and litchi: pineapple, watermelon, dewa (monkey jack), latkan (Burmese grape), kalo jam, golap jam (rose apple), bet phal (cane fruit), gab, jamrul (wax apple), custard apple, kau, palmyra fruit, bel (wood apple), papaya, karamcha, chalta (elephant apple), star fruit, olive, ashphal (longan), local dragon fruit and sharifa (sugar apple). Samakal's 2022 feature gave almost the same list of the month's fruit.

In the writer's description, fruit from the villages fills city lanes and markets in Jaishtha. In the countryside relatives invite one another over the season's fruit, and people visit family carrying fruit from their own trees. Towns hold fruit festivals; offices buy assorted fruit to share with colleagues; social and cultural groups and university campuses hold their own events, and some rural schools and colleges do the same.

He also described the trade. Fruit is sold from temporary tents, online and on social media, and pop-up businesses spring up in the districts known for mango and litchi. People from other occupations, including many vegetable sellers, switch to fruit for the season. Because ripe fruit does not keep and the season is short, he wrote, many people take up fruit trading as part-time work and profit from it, and many farmers grow local fruit beside their other crops for extra income. Imported fruit dominates the rest of the year, in his account, but in Jaishtha local fruit takes over the market.

Government figures show how far local fruit growing has spread. Citing the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), Jagonews24 reported on 14 November 2025 that Bangladesh produced 15.033 million tonnes of fruit on 765,559 hectares in fiscal 2024-25, against 9.972 million tonnes on 678,145 hectares in 2013-14. Between 2012-13 and 2023-24, output of mango, jam, litchi, banana, jujube, papaya, guava and pineapple rose among the ten main fruits, while jackfruit and coconut fell. The same report said 38 kinds of fruit were imported, and that, by the National Board of Revenue's count, imported fruit cost Tk 4,500 crore in 2023-24.

The government also promotes local fruit through an annual National Fruit Fair. BSS reported that the 2025 fair ran from 19 to 21 June at the Krishibid Institution grounds at Khamarbari in Dhaka under the slogan "Eat more local fruit, plant fruit trees". Seventy-five organisations took part, 26 public and 49 private, and fairs were held in 431 upazilas across all 64 districts.

The writer points out that the mango is not only the king of fruits; the mango tree is Bangladesh's national tree, a designation reported by bdnews24 on 15 November 2010. The mango, Mangifera indica, belongs to the family Anacardiaceae. Banglapedia, the national encyclopedia, places its origin in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent, the region that takes in Bangladesh, Assam in India and Myanmar. Julia Morton's "Fruits of Warm Climates", published online by Purdue University in the United States, likewise describes the mango as native to southern Asia, especially eastern India, Burma and the Andaman Islands, where it has been grown and prized since ancient times.

Its fame is old. The medieval Indo-Persian poet Amir Khusrau called the mango "the fairest fruit of Hindustan". Banglapedia says the Chinese traveller Hiuen Tsang (632-645 AD) is credited with first bringing the mango to the attention of the outside world, and that the Mughal emperor Akbar planted an orchard of about 100,000 mango trees, the Lakh Bagh, near Darbhanga in India. In ancient Sanskrit the fruit was called amra. The writer also mentions the American horticulturist Wilson Popenoe's praise of the mango; Morton's book records Dr Popenoe's important role in spreading the mango through tropical America.

Several of the dates the column gave for the mango's spread around the world did not match other sources, so this account follows Morton and Wikipedia. According to Morton, Buddhist monks took the mango to Southeast Asia in the fourth and fifth centuries BC, and Persians carried it to East Africa around the 10th century AD. The 14th-century Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta reported it at Mogadishu. The Portuguese brought it to West Africa in the early 1600s and then to Brazil. It reached Barbados in the West Indies by 1742, Jamaica in 1782 and Mexico in the early 1800s. Plants went from Manila to Hawaii in 1824, and seeds reached Florida in 1862-63. The column's accounts of Alexander tasting mangoes in the Indus valley, of mangoes grown under glass in England in 1690 and of the fruit reaching Mexico in 1774 could not be confirmed in a reliable source and have been left out.

Banglapedia lists Bangladesh's leading mango varieties as Fazli, Langra, Gopalbhog, Himsagar, Khirsapat, Ashwina, Kishanbhog, Kuapahari, Lata Bombai, Foria, Bombai, Kohitoor, Laxmanbhog, Mohanbhog and Misribhog, grown mostly in Rajshahi, Chapainawabganj and Dinajpur. Most mangoes are eaten fresh, but large amounts also go into jam, jelly, squash, chutney and pickle. The writer describes Suryapuri, Kuapahari and Bombai among the local varieties as late, Mohanbhog as mid-season, and Lata Bombai as a mid-season variety with a small tree and small fruit.

The Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI) has developed 11 improved high-yielding mango varieties, according to a study by researchers at EXIM Bank Agricultural University published in January 2024. Of these, BARI Aam-3 is known in the field as Amrapali: a dwarf tree that bears regularly every year, sets small fruit in clusters and keeps well. BARI Aam-4 came from a cross between the local Ashwina variety and a hybrid of M3896, a Florida variety; it reaches market in the last week of July and lasts into August. The study found that Amrapali and BARI Aam-4 had become the most widely grown hybrid varieties in Chapainawabganj, because the trees stay short and need little space. The column had named BARI Aam-2 as Amrapali; the sources identify Amrapali as BARI Aam-3, and the text has been corrected. Its statement that Bangladesh has nearly a thousand mango varieties could not be confirmed in a reliable source and has been left out.

Before the column appeared, BSS reported on 21 April 2026 that favourable weather had raised hopes of a record mango harvest that season, possibly above 2.7 million tonnes. Mohammad Arifur Rahman, director of the DAE's Exportable Mango Production Project, said mango was grown on about 204,000 hectares that season. DAE data put production in fiscal 2024-25 at 2.67 million tonnes, with record exports of 2,194 tonnes to 38 countries, and Bangladesh had exported mangoes to China for the first time the previous year. Chapainawabganj, Rajshahi, Satkhira and Dinajpur were named as the main producing districts.

To keep unripe mangoes off the market, district administrations announce picking schedules, known as 'mango calendars'. Prothom Alo reported on 10 May 2026 that Rajshahi's calendar set these dates:

• 15 May: all guti (seedling) mangoes
• 22 May: Gopalbhog
• 25 May: Ranipasand and Laxmanbhog
• 30 May: Himsagar or Khirsapati
• 10 June: Banana Mango and Langra
• 15 June: Amrapali and Fazli
• 5 July: BARI Aam-4; 10 July: Ashwina; 15 July: Gourmati
• Katimon and BARI Aam-11: all year round

Rajshahi's deputy commissioner, Kazi Shahidul Islam, said that day that anyone taking unripe mangoes to market would face legal action. Naogaon set 22 May as its start date, with the GI-recognised Nak Fazli from 5 June. Mango was grown on 30,310 hectares there, the production target was 387,361 tonnes, and the agriculture department expected trade worth about Tk 3,000 crore. Picking began on 5 May in Satkhira and on 13 May in Chuadanga.

Chapainawabganj, the largest mango-growing district, set no calendar in 2026. BSS reported on 16 May that deputy commissioner Abu Saleh Md Musa said growers had agreed at a meeting on 11 May that mangoes could be sold as soon as they ripened on the tree. The district had 37,487 hectares under mango and a production target of 458,912 tonnes. In the same report a grower in Shibganj alleged that although a maund should be 40 kg, sellers had to hand over 50 to 55 kg per maund depending on the market; the deputy commissioner said he would discuss the weighing issue with higher authorities.

The writer calls the jackfruit the national fruit and "the poor man's fruit": eaten unripe as a vegetable, ripe on its own or with milk and rice, and its seeds roasted, boiled or cooked in curries. The column called it the world's largest fruit; Banglapedia describes it as "one of the largest edible fruits known", and that wording is used here. Its scientific name is Artocarpus heterophyllus.

According to Banglapedia, the jackfruit tree flowers from December to March and the fruit ripens from May to August. There are three main types in Bangladesh: khaja, with firm flesh; gala, with very juicy, soft flesh; and dorosa, in between, fairly firm and juicy. The flesh of unripe fruit is cooked as a vegetable, the large seeds are boiled or roasted for many dishes, and the yellow heartwood is a valuable timber that also yields a yellow dye.

Prothom Alo reported on 19 July 2025, citing the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), that Bangladesh ranks second in jackfruit production after India. In fiscal 2023-24 the country produced 1,830,131 tonnes on 58,700 hectares, with Gazipur, Bandarban, Rangamati, Tangail and Khagrachhari the top commercial districts. DAE horticulturist Md Moinul Haque said jackfruit does best on reddish, raised land. Exports that year were just 2,081 tonnes. Moshiur Rahman, director of BARI's fruit division, said the country had six jackfruit varieties, including ones bred to fruit year-round. According to Jagonews24's November 2025 report, jackfruit output had been 3.212 million tonnes on 82,691 hectares in 2012-13; Moinul Haque attributed the decline to the lack of commercial cultivation.

For jam, the writer recalls a well-known line by the rural poet Jasimuddin about staining one's face with the sweet juice of ripe jam. Samakal's 2022 feature quoted the same verse, which tells of gathering mangoes on stormy days at an uncle's village home and colouring one's mouth with ripe jam. In the writer's account there are two broad kinds, the large kalo jam and the small wild jam, and the fruit is most plentiful in Cumilla, Noakhali, Sylhet, Dinajpur and Pabna.

Jam is Syzygium cumini, known in English as Java plum, black plum or jamun. It is an evergreen tree native to the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, Bangladesh included, that can grow to 100 feet and live for more than a century. It flowers in March and April and fruits in May and June. As the fruit ripens it turns from green to pink to deep red and finally black; it tastes sweet, mildly sour and astringent, and stains the tongue purple. It is eaten raw or made into jam, sauces, juice and syrup, and the water-resistant wood has been used for furniture and railway sleepers.

Citing DAE data, Jagonews24 reported that jam production rose from 37,000 tonnes to 45,000 tonnes between 2012-13 and 2023-24. Some places have reported losing old trees, though. Ajker Patrika reported from Ghior in Manikganj on 16 June 2022 that the area was once known for juicy black jam, but felling had left far fewer trees and jam had become one of the costlier fruits in the market.

The writer calls the litchi the month's other juicy fruit, with a small brown seed inside its white flesh. It is sold by count, in bunches of 50 or 100, priced per hundred, and each variety has its own price and taste. He also notes Dinajpur's fame for litchi. The place printed as 'Masumpur' in the column appears as 'Machhimpur' in a BSS list of Dinajpur Sadar areas known for high-quality litchi.

According to Banglapedia, the litchi, Litchi chinensis, originated in China and reached Burma and India by the end of the 17th century. In Bangladesh it is grown mainly in Rajshahi, Rangpur, Dinajpur, Jashore, Kushtia, Mymensingh and Narayanganj. The edible part makes up 50 to 75 percent of the fruit's weight. DAE data show litchi production rising from 119,000 tonnes in 2012-13 to 230,000 tonnes in 2023-24.

Reports published shortly before the column describe Dinajpur's 2026 season. Ajker Patrika reported on 24 May that litchi was grown in all 13 upazilas of the district, mostly in Sadar, Birol and Chirirbandar. Chirirbandar had 565 hectares under litchi with a target of 6,680 tonnes; the upazila agriculture officer, Johara Sultana, said bad weather could cut output by about 20 percent below target. Varieties grown there included Madrazi, Bedana, Haria Bedana, Bombai, China-3, China-2, Kathali and Mozaffari.

BSS reported from Dinajpur on 1 June that all kinds of litchi, including the GI-recognised Bedana, had begun reaching market and that the wholesale markets at Kalitala and Pulhat were busy. That day 100 Madrazi litchis sold for Tk 300 to 350, Bedana for Tk 600 to 700 and China-3 for Tk 800 to 900. About 20 percent of Dinajpur's litchi meets local demand and the other 80 percent goes to other districts. Md Ejamul Haque, deputy director of the horticulture wing, said the district had 7,370 hectares of litchi orchards and a target of 39,550 tonnes, and that growers could earn Tk 800 to 900 crore. Md Motahar Hossain, the DAE's additional regional director, said Bedana litchis from Dinajpur had been shipped to France, Canada and Australia the previous year.

Closing his piece, Dr Ali called fruit a blessing from Almighty Allah that needs no cooking, and urged readers to eat plenty of it in season. He also alleged that some dishonest traders add harmful chemicals to fruit to ripen it quickly and make it shine, and called on readers to avoid such traders and to help the relevant government departments bring them to justice, which he described as the duty of every conscientious citizen.

Officials were also watching for chemicals that season. On 10 May the Naogaon deputy commissioner, Mohammad Saiful Islam, said no chemicals could be used to ripen, store or market mangoes and that the administration would keep a special watch against adulteration. Humaira Mondal, the DAE's deputy director in Naogaon, said the picking schedule was set so that consumers would get mature mangoes free of harmful chemicals. In Satkhira, mobile courts, checkpoints and monitoring teams were to stop early picking.

The argument over ripening agents is an old one. In an editorial on 24 May 2018, The Financial Express reported that the chairman of the Bangladesh Food Safety Authority (BFSA) had told a daily newspaper that applying ethephon in low concentration was legal but that using carbide was not. The paper wrote that action was often taken without testing which chemical had been used and in what amount, and that the rules needed to be made clear.

Photo: Mostafizur Rahman Sawon / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Sources: Jagonews24 (column by Dr Md Forkan Ali, 6 June 2026), BSS, Prothom Alo, Ajker Patrika, Samakal, The Financial Express, Banglapedia, Purdue University (Julia Morton, Fruits of Warm Climates), EBAUB Journal of EXIM Bank Agricultural University, Wikipedia