Mango blossom covers Rajshahi University campus as bees work the trees

The Rajshahi University (RU) campus was dressed in mango blossom in the last week of February 2026. Jagonews24's university correspondent Monir Hossain Mahin reported on 26 February that branches across the Motihar campus were bending under yellowish blossom, a sweet scent hung in the air, and the hum of bees and the calls of birds filled the grounds, giving students and visitors an unmistakable sign that spring had come.

The trees in flower stood in the university's mango orchard, at the transport square and the Buddhijibi square, beside the central mosque and the Shaheed Minar, at the fine arts and agriculture faculties, at the Boddhobhumi memorial, in front of the academic buildings and in the yards of the residential halls. Among the green leaves, the report said, the mass of yellow blossom looked like nature's own festival of colour. From morning to afternoon bees moved busily over the laden branches; the scent carried on the breeze made passing students stop, and the chirping of small birds brought a moment of calm to a busy academic routine.

In the cycle of the seasons this short-lived blossom would soon turn into small green mangoes and ripen in the summer, and the report described the fragrant weeks on the campus as a quiet promise of the harvest to come.

Students told Jagonews24 that RU's mango trees take on a new look every spring, but that this year there was comparatively more blossom because of favourable weather, and they expected a good yield in the coming season. Others involved with the campus also believed that there could be a bumper crop if the weather stayed helpful.

Humaira Tabassum Saba, a student of the Department of Painting, Oriental Art and Printmaking, said the scent of mango blossom could be felt simply by walking across the campus. She said the season seemed to teach people to slow down a little, that even amid a busy life one could feel nature's calm touch, and that spring on the campus was not only a change in nature but also a subtle renewal within.

Sadia Akter, a student of Mass Communication and Journalism, said she watched the mango blossom open from close up every year, and that trees full of yellowish blossom made the arrival of spring plain to see. The scent and the freshness all around, she said, filled the mind with a strange calm. Seeing the blossom brought hope that there might be plenty of mangoes this time, to be shared and enjoyed together. Recalling the previous year, she said that chatting with friends under the trees, the taste of ripe mangoes and the smell of mangoes on hot afternoons had given campus life a feeling of its own.

Professor Dr Mustafa Abul Kalam Azad of the Department of Botany told Jagonews24 that there had been comparatively less fog that winter, so less blossom had been damaged. He added that many mango trees naturally bear more fruit one year and rest the next, and that branch growth is affected differently on trees that bear regularly.

Professor Dr Md Giasuddin Ahmed of the Department of Agronomy and Agricultural Extension said that weather plays an important part in mango blossom and yield. A gradual rise in temperature in spring and little fog create a suitable environment for flowering, he said. Yields had been low over the previous two years, and one reason was that after a year of heavy bearing, a shortage of nutrients reduces the crop the following year.

He said that when winter temperatures fall to 10 degrees Celsius or below, many harmful insects are kept in check. In earlier years temperatures had stayed above normal, so pest attacks on the blossom had increased; this time the comparatively lower temperatures meant less pest infestation. And because the previous two years' yields had been low, the trees had been able to store enough nutrients, which raised the chance of a good crop this year.

On care of the orchards, Professor Giasuddin said government bodies such as the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) regularly train farmers, but that excessive use of pesticides often harms the environment and the fertility of the soil.

The teachers' account matched the weather record of that winter. On 6 January 2026 Rajshahi recorded 7 degrees Celsius, the lowest temperature of the season up to then, according to the Bangladesh Meteorological Department, and a cold wave was running over ten districts: Rajshahi, Pabna, Bogura, Dinajpur, Nilphamari, Panchagarh, Rangamati, Jashore, Kushtia and Chuadanga. Meteorologist Dr Omar Faruk told The Daily Star then that conditions would stay much the same until 11 January and that temperatures would start rising from 12 January. In the classification the paper set out, a minimum of 10 to 8.1 degrees is a mild cold wave and 8 to 6.1 degrees a moderate one.

Researchers at the government's Fruit Research Station in Rajshahi, part of the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), had noted early flowering. Its chief scientific officer, Dr Md Shafiqul Islam, told the state news agency BSS on 15 February 2026 that blossom had arrived earlier than usual, that more was expected than in the previous year, and that the production target would be met if fog did no serious damage. On 26 February, the same day the RU report appeared, he told BSS that the winter had passed without late fog or rain and that temperatures had risen gradually, which had helped the trees keep their flowering on track.

Growers in Charghat said the same. Mozaffar Hossain of Kaluhati village told BSS in mid-February that the blossom had come early and that the crop could be very large if fog did not destroy it, while Mahfuz Ali, another Charghat grower, warned that production could fall if hoppers and other sucking pests were not controlled in time.

Fog has long been the worry at this stage. In February 2023 Prothom Alo reported the views of Jahangir Shah, a teacher at Rajshahi Collegiate School who had kept daily weather notes for about 20 years: fog had lasted seven days in that year's flowering period, against five days the year before and four the year before that, and fog together with warm nights and cold mornings could harm fruit setting. He said fruit forms from the blossom between 15 and 27 February. In January 2025 Ittefaq reported from Charghat that growers feared dense fog would destroy early blossom; an official of the agriculture department said then that the risk was low if sunshine followed the fog, and agriculture officers recommended fungicide sprays to protect the blossom.

The mango, Mangifera indica, belongs to the cashew family, Anacardiaceae, and is considered native to the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent, including Bangladesh, Assam and Myanmar, according to Banglapedia, the national encyclopedia of Bangladesh. In Bangladesh the trees flower from January to March, and fog, rain or cloudy weather in that period harms fruit setting. The flowers are small and fragrant, white, yellowish or violet, borne in large panicles at the tips of the shoots, and they may be unisexual or bisexual.

Only a tiny share of them become fruit. Banglapedia says that roughly one or two flowers in a thousand develop into a mature mango, and that two or three fruits per panicle often make a satisfactory crop. The University of Florida's extension service describes a panicle as 2.5 to 16 inches long carrying from 550 to more than 4,000 flowers, most of them male (staminate) and the rest perfect, with both male and female parts. It notes that dry weather before and during bloom is considered best for fruit production: anthracnose, a fungal disease that attacks flowers and young fruit, is encouraged by rain or heavy dew, while powdery mildew, which also attacks flowers and young fruit, is linked to dry spring weather.

Banglapedia lists about 100 mango cultivars in Bangladesh, with Fazli, Langra, Gopalbhog, Himsagar, Khirsapat and Ashwina among the elite varieties, and names Rajshahi, Nawabganj (Chapainawabganj) and Dinajpur as the main areas for superior varieties, with BARI research stations at Rajshahi, Chapainawabganj and Joydebpur. Grafted trees start bearing from about the fourth year and stay productive until about the 45th; trees raised from seed take several more years to bear and may fruit for 60 years or more. About three dozen insect pests attack the mango in Bangladesh, the mango hoppers among the major ones.

The bees humming over RU's trees were part of a larger crew. The University of Florida names thrips, flies and, to a small extent, honey bees as the pollinators of mango. A study published in the Journal of Insect Science in 2015 by A. Nurul Huda and colleagues, which followed two cultivars in Malaysia, found that large flies of the genera Eristalinus and Chrysomya carried the most mango pollen, while ants visited often but pollinated poorly. The authors noted that mango flowers are not very attractive to honey bees, probably because they yield little honey.

The same study showed how much depends on these visitors. Naturally pollinated flowers set fruit on 4.8 percent of hermaphrodite flowers in the cultivar Sala and 3.1 percent in Chok Anan; Chok Anan set no fruit at all when insects were kept away, and hand pollination raised fruit set by more than 100 percent in Sala and by about 33 percent in Chok Anan. The researchers estimated that pollinators accounted for about 53 percent of total fruit set. A Chok Anan panicle carried about 1,153 flowers, 15.7 percent of them hermaphrodite, and a Sala panicle about 733, of which 9.2 percent were hermaphrodite; more than 95 percent of the hermaphrodite flowers in both dropped without setting fruit.

According to the DAE office in Rajshahi, cited by BSS on 15 February 2026 and by Bangla Tribune the next day, mangoes were grown on 19,603 hectares in Rajshahi district in the 2024-25 fiscal year and produced 249,952 tonnes; the target for 2025-26 was 246,000 tonnes from the same area. Blossom was especially heavy in Bagha, Charghat and Puthia upazilas, and farmers had sprayed on the advice of the local agriculture office to protect it from disease.

For the 2025 harvest, the Rajshahi district administration had projected 260,006 tonnes from 19,603 hectares at an average yield of 13.26 tonnes per hectare, with sales estimated at Tk 1,695.85 crore, Dhaka Tribune reported on 7 May 2025. To keep immature fruit off the market it set a picking calendar for that season:

• All early varieties: from 15 May
• Gopalbhog: from 20 May
• Rani Pasand or Lakshmanbhog: from 25 May
• Himsagar or Khirsapat: from 30 May
• Langra: from 10 June
• Amrapali and Fazli: from 15 June
• BARI Aam-4: from 5 July
• Ashwina: from 10 July
• Gaurmati: from 15 July

A BSS report on 26 February 2026 gave the DAE's latest figures for the four districts of the Rajshahi region. Rajshahi district's orchards had shrunk by 541 hectares in a year, from 19,603 to 19,062 hectares, with 3,695,277 trees, about 60 percent of them in blossom. Naogaon's orchards had grown from 30,300 to 30,500 hectares, with 20,534,325 trees and about 71 percent in blossom; Chapainawabganj had 37,487 hectares, 17 fewer than a year earlier, with about 70 percent in blossom; and Natore had 5,069 hectares and 1,486,187 trees, about 53 percent in blossom. Across the region 92,552 hectares of orchards held 34,960,554 trees, of which about 63 percent had flowered so far.

The previous season's yield had been good, BSS noted, but excess rain had destroyed a large quantity of mangoes, prices had fallen and growers had suffered losses. Dr Azizur Rahman, additional director of the DAE's Rajshahi region, expected an excellent harvest and said his office was working to open export opportunities for farmers. Kazi Zulfikar Ali, an associate professor of economics at Rajshahi University, told BSS that farmers were cutting mango trees mainly because profits had fallen: most varieties of the area ripen late, prices drop when they reach the market, and the fruit is perishable with little storage. He said Naogaon had overtaken Rajshahi and that some farmers were thinking of going back to rice.

Nationally, DAE data reported by BSS and The Business Standard in April 2025 put mango output at 2,350,499 tonnes from about 202,968 hectares in fiscal 2020-21, 2,707,459 tonnes in 2022-23 and 2,508,973 tonnes from 205,034 hectares in 2023-24, with a target of a record 27 lakh tonnes for the 2025 season. Mangoes are grown mainly in 15 districts, Rajshahi, Naogaon, Chapainawabganj and Satkhira among them. Exports reached 3,100 tonnes in 2022-23 and 1,321 tonnes in 2023-24, and the 2025 target was about 5,000 tonnes.

Rajshahi University was set up under the Rajshahi University Act of 1953, gazetted on 16 June 1953, and teaching began in the 1953-54 session, according to Banglapedia. The campus lies at Motihar on 298.2 hectares; in 2018-19 the university had nine faculties and 59 departments. Banglapedia records that during the 1971 Liberation War the Pakistan army killed three of its teachers, 15 non-teaching employees and nine students. The Faculty of Agriculture dates from 2000, when a local agricultural college was absorbed into the university, and mango plantations line Paris Road and the areas near Kazla pond and the vice-chancellor's residence.

The campus sits in a district whose mango history is old. In June 2025 Prothom Alo traced it: large parts of the RU and Rajshahi University of Engineering and Technology campuses are covered with mango orchards; Abdul Latif, an envoy of the Mughal emperor Jahangir, recorded Bagha's mangoes and orchards in his diary in 1609; and in the 19th century Fazli and Khirsapat mangoes from Bagha sold in Kolkata's markets under the name "Natore mango". The Raypara orchard at Hadgram in Rajshahi city once covered about 500 bighas and held varieties gathered from across the subcontinent.

Fazli carries a geographical indication. After the Fruit Research Centre in Rajshahi applied on 9 March 2017 and growers in Chapainawabganj objected, the Department of Patents, Designs and Trademarks declared it "Rajshahi-Chapainawabganj's Fazli mango" on 24 May 2022, UNB reported. Breeding work on new varieties began in Bangladesh in 1993, and BARI has released 18 mango varieties, including three hybrids; 14 came from the Chapainawabganj mango research station and the other four from Rajshahi and other fruit research centres, Prothom Alo reported in June 2025. BSS noted in February 2026 that Amrapali (BARI Aam-3) and BARI Aam-4 were spreading in the region's new orchards. The mango tree is also Bangladesh's national tree, a decision bdnews24.com reported on 15 November 2010.

Spraying was part of the season. BSS reported in February 2026 that Rajshahi farmers had sprayed pesticides on the advice of local agriculture officials to protect the blossom, and the Fruit Research Station's chief scientific officer said farmers had been told to spray as part of orchard care. Professor Giasuddin's warning on the RU campus pointed the other way: too much pesticide harms the environment and the soil.

The question has a history in Rajshahi. In April 2019, with farmers spraying against erratic weather and pests, the High Court on 9 April ordered magistrates and police to be deployed to the orchards of the Rajshahi division within seven days to stop the misuse of toxic chemicals on mangoes, and on 16 April the Supreme Court rejected a petition against the order, The Daily Star reported. Fruit researcher Dr Sharaf Uddin told the paper then that officials advise farmers to use legal pesticides when disease appears, and that spraying is unnecessary when there is no disease.

Because open mango flowers depend on visiting insects to set fruit, as the pollination research shows, the choice of product, timing and dose matters. This report gives no doses: growers should follow the advice of their upazila agriculture officer or the Fruit Research Station in Rajshahi before spraying an orchard in flower.

Photo: Sm faysal / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Sources: Jagonews24, BSS, Bangla Tribune, The Daily Star, Dhaka Tribune, The Business Standard, Prothom Alo, The Daily Ittefaq, UNB, Banglapedia, Wikipedia, University of Florida IFAS Extension, Journal of Insect Science