Sabbir Hossain Rocky is a young man from Dakshin Betka village in Tongibari upazila, Munshiganj. At a time when the market was full of formalin-treated fruit, he planted a few mango trees beside his home as a hobby so his family could eat formalin-free mangoes. The trees yielded well, so he gradually expanded the orchard, and the hobby garden has now become a large commercial orchard.

Within five years Sabbir has built a commercial mango orchard covering three acres. Mangoes hang from several hundred local and foreign trees and fetch good prices at market. Every day people from the area and further afield crowd in to see the orchard and buy mangoes.

Sabbir Hossain Rocky, a garments businessman by profession, is the son of local resident Abdul Latif Sheikh. His business is in Narayanganj, but he has now turned wholeheartedly to mango farming.

A visit to Dakshin Betka in Tongibari found mangoes of many colours and varieties hanging from tree after tree in Rocky's orchard. Mango trees are everywhere, from the courtyard to the edge of the pond next door, with a large orchard a little further away. Rocky was tending the trees by the pond with his workers. Alongside local varieties such as Haribhanga, Surma, Fazli, Ashwini, Amrapali, Langra, Nak Fazli and Guti, the orchard has Chiang Mai, Kiujai King Chakapat, American Red Palmal, Kiujai, BARI-4, BARI-11, Four KG, Gourmati, Banana, Al Froncho, Dokmai, Thai Kachamitha and Katimon, among 20 to 25 varieties in all.

Workers at the orchard said almost every variety has fruited this year, with small and large mangoes of various colours. The Four KG variety is the heaviest, each fruit weighing 3.5 to 4 kg. The mangoes are selling at Tk 300 a kg, so a single 4 kg mango costs Tk 1,200.

Sabbir Hossain Rocky told Jagonews24: "I saw that most mangoes in the market were treated with formalin. Then I thought, I have parents and children at home, and I need to feed them safe mangoes. Since we have the land, I started growing mangoes and other fruit. But mango was the main focus, because everyone loves mango, the king of fruits."

Within a year he saw a good yield, he said, and the next year the yield doubled. "Then I thought I would make a big orchard like those in Rajshahi and Dinajpur. At first I grew mangoes on 15 decimals of land. Now my orchard covers three acres."

"Last year my orchard produced 1,600 kg (40 maunds) of mangoes. I sold half and shared the other half with family and relatives. This year I have started selling commercially. I hope to sell Tk 3 lakh to Tk 3.5 lakh worth of mangoes this time," he added.

ABM Wahidur Rahman, training officer at the district office of the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), said potatoes are Munshiganj's main crop, but entrepreneurs like Rocky are now setting up mango orchards large and small in the district, which is encouraging news.

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