Global warming and rising sea levels are increasing soil salinity on the coast and reducing farmland productivity. To cope, farmers have turned to mungbean, and its area on single-crop land grows every year. Mungbean is now a promising new crop in the south.

With support from the Australian government's ACIAR project on developing salt-tolerant wheat and pulse varieties and technologies to crop fallow coastal land in the dry season, mini-mills for splitting mungbean have been supplied jointly with the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI) and the Bangladesh wheat research institute. Since 2021, 21 mini-mills have been installed in various places in Patuakhali and Barguna.

Mungbean is not only nutritious; its roots increase soil fertility, and ploughing the plants into the land also raises fertility, which agricultural scientists say helps somewhat in reducing salinity.

Source: Shykh Seraj, Hridoye Mati O Manush. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.