Foreign peach fruit is being grown on the hills of Mirsarai in Chattogram, the first time the fruit has been cultivated in northern Chattogram. Young agricultural entrepreneur Md Omar Sharif has started picking fruit from the trees. His orchard has several foreign fruit trees alongside local ones, and he is pleased that the peach trees have fruited this year.

At Zohra Agro Farm, the trees were found laden with bunches of fruit. The peach tree is medium-sized, with leaves rather like those of pomegranate or custard apple and many small leaves at the base of each leaf. The flowers are pink. The fruit is oval, with a curved, pointed tip like a mango. Unripe fruit is green; when ripe it turns light yellow with a red blush.

Unripe fruit is hard with a rough skin; ripe fruit is soft and breaks easily when pressed. The juicy flesh of ripe fruit is light yellow and red towards the centre, and tastes sour. Each fruit has one hard brown seed. Peaches ripen in May and June. One kilogram of the fruit gives about 470 calories of energy. Peaches can be propagated by bud grafting.

Md Omar Sharif said he brought six peach saplings from Thailand in 2021 and planted them in his orchard. Four trees have fruited this year, four years after planting, and he is very happy that the foreign trees have borne fruit. He has decided to expand cultivation and also sell saplings in future. Besides peaches, the orchard has foreign fruits such as avocado and Thai sapodilla.

Their hill orchard is reported to have some of the world's expensive mangoes, including Miyazaki (Surjodim), Kiojai, Banana Mango, Indonesian Brunei King, King of Chakapat, Alphonso, Alfanchun and Thai Banana. It also has cinnamon, clove, pulasan, rambutan, apple, tamarind, Thai sapodilla, chenak fruit, Thai baricaded malta, year-round malta, Chinese orange, Darjeeling orange, China-3 lychee, latkan, jackfruit, Vietnamese coconut and Sri Lankan coconut.

Mirsarai Upazila Agriculture Officer Pratap Chandra Roy said: "Peach is a very good fruit and very beneficial for the body. This is the first time anyone in Mirsarai has grown it on a trial basis. Young entrepreneur Omar Sharif's orchard has many kinds of local and foreign fruit trees, and peach is among the most notable."

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.