With Nabiganj's soil and weather suited to it, commercial farming of the foreign dragon fruit has begun in the area, and Moshiur Rahman has already made a success of it. Because the fruit fetches good prices and is in demand in the market, its cultivation is growing day by day. Dragon fruit, grown in a short time with little capital, offers the unemployed a chance to become self-reliant.

The Bobani tea garden lies past the winding up-and-down roads of Paniumda village in Dinarpur pargana, the upazila's hilly area. On about an acre of the tea garden at the foot of the hills, Moshiur Rahman has grown dragon fruit successfully, and many others are now interested in the fruit.

The agriculture office said dragon fruit is easy to grow on land that gets full sunlight and does not flood or stay damp in the rainy season. The plants start fruiting only nine months after the garden is planted. A fruit weighs 200 to 300 grams, though a mature plant of four to five years can give fruit of up to a kilogram. One plant can yield up to 80 kg of fruit a year.

Binoy Chandra Bharman, manager of the Bobani dragon garden in Nabiganj, said the garden's owner, Moshiur Rahman, planned the dragon fruit farm a year ago. He first made about 500 cement pillars, stood them up and planted four seedlings around each one, about 2,000 seedlings in all. The whole project cost about Tk 7 lakh. In the first season alone he sold more than Tk 1.5 lakh worth of fruit, and he hopes to sell three times as much in future.

Nabiganj upazila agriculture officer AKM Maksudul Alam said several dragon fruit gardens have been set up in the upazila, and seeing them, others are becoming interested. He advised anyone who wants to grow the fruit commercially to seek advice from the upazila agriculture office.

Tamij Uddin Khan, deputy director of the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) in Habiganj, said: "Dragon is a promising fruit for our country. It is highly nutritious and rich in vitamin C, and it acts as a preventive against cancer and many other serious diseases."

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