Mango glut in Rangamati hill markets brings low prices and losses for growers

Near the end of the mango season in mid-June 2026, the markets of Rangamati, the hill district in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, were still full of mangoes. A good crop that year meant that buyers were paying low prices, Jagonews24 reported on 16 June 2026, while growers said the money they received did not cover the cost of their orchards and of carrying fruit out of the hills.

In the district town and in the upazilas, sellers offered hill-grown Amrapali, Rangui, banana mango, BARI Aam-4, Haribhanga and Katimon. According to the report, the same mangoes cost even less in upazila markets than in the town.

According to the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) in Rangamati, the district produced 38,285 tonnes of mangoes on 3,625 hectares in the 2024-25 season. In the 2025-26 season the area under mango rose to 3,635 hectares. Thanks to the hill slopes and favourable weather, the DAE expected output in 2026 to exceed the target.

Alongside local varieties, Rangamati has seen commercial orchards of well-known and costly foreign varieties: Rangui (a variety from Myanmar), Amrapali (an Indian variety), BARI Aam-4, Miyazaki, banana mango, Brunei King and Katimon. Of these, the report described Amrapali as the tastiest; because it reaches the market late in the season, it is the variety in greatest demand at that time.

The expansion had been building for years. In June 2021 the Daily Ittefaq, in a report titled "Mango revolution in the hills", gave that year's figures for the three hill districts: 13,342 hectares under mango with a target of 151,000 tonnes. Rangamati had 2,392 hectares and a target of 26,312 tonnes, Khagrachhari 3,369 hectares and about 35,000 tonnes, and Bandarban, the district with the most orchards and the most large agro-farm orchards, 7,581 hectares and about 90,000 tonnes.

The same Ittefaq report traced Amrapali cultivation in the hills to 1998-99, when it began under the Kalikapur Model Project, with the Chittagong Hill Tracts Development Board supplying saplings and fertiliser free of charge. Md Nasir Uddin Chowdhury, then additional deputy director of the DAE in Chattogram, told the paper that hill people were turning to mango because the yields were good and the crop was more profitable. Dr Md Zulfikar Ali Firoz, a chief scientific officer at the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), said the soil and climate of the hills suited many mango varieties, and called for processing factories and cold storage so that farmers would get fair prices and less fruit would rot.

A study published in 2019 in the International Journal of Sustainable Agricultural Research by Md Jahurul Islam, based on 459 fruit growers in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, found Rangui to be the most widely planted mango there: 78 per cent of the growers had it, and Amrapali came second at 36 per cent. For mango, jackfruit and litchi alike, the study found that growers' marketable surplus was larger than what they actually sold, and it grouped the problems that kept them from a steady link with the market under four heads: marketing, economic, social and environmental.

At Banarupa bazar in Rangamati town, fruit sellers were pricing mangoes low in June 2026. Kanchan Chakma, a seasonal fruit seller there, told Jagonews24: "The yield is good this year, so I am selling Amrapali and Rangui cheaply. You can get three kilos from me for just Tk 100, and I will give more off to anyone who buys more. I have sold seasonal fruit in different markets for four years, and mangoes have never been this cheap."

Bindu Majumder, a long-established fruit trader at the same bazar, said his prices were somewhat higher because he sold only the best mangoes picked from the market, from a fixed stall, and would take back any fruit that turned out bad. At his stall Amrapali, BARI-4 and Haribhanga sold at Tk 60 a kilogram and banana mango at Tk 100.

Another retailer, Doyalal Chakma, sat on the pavement of the bazar selling only banana mango. "This variety is being grown a lot now," he said. "Its price has fallen to half of last year's and may fall further next year. I am selling banana mango for just Tk 80 a kilo now."

A seasonal fruit market sits almost every day at Samata Ghat, near Banarupa bazar. Local retailers buy there, and so do wholesale traders who carry the fruit to wholesale markets (arats) in Dhaka, Chattogram, Cumilla and other parts of the country. Hill mangoes had travelled that way for years: the 2021 Ittefaq report already described wholesalers from Dhaka, Chattogram, Feni and Cumilla as buying most of the hill districts' mangoes, and noted that online sales of hill mangoes had begun that year.

Zia Uddin Bablu, a wholesale trader at Samata Ghat, told Jagonews24 that prices were much lower in 2026 because mango production in the hills had risen. He said he dealt in various seasonal fruits, buying at this market and selling at the wholesale arats. At the time of the report, Haribhanga was selling there at Tk 1,000 to Tk 1,600 a maund, Amrapali at Tk 1,000 to Tk 1,400 a maund, and Rangui at Tk 400 a maund. The maund is the traditional measure of the fruit trade, about 37 kilograms, as The Daily Star explained in a 2021 report on mango prices.

For comparison, the same 2021 Ittefaq report had found good-quality Amrapali in Khagrachhari selling at Tk 55 to Tk 60 a kilogram retail and Tk 45 to Tk 50 a kilogram wholesale in the season of that year.

At the growers' end, the mood was one of frustration. Growers told Jagonews24 that establishing an orchard and bringing it into fruit was expensive, and that once transport was added they saw only losses. Rangui, which grows well in hill soil along with other varieties, was selling wholesale at just Tk 10 a kilogram, and at that price, the growers said, they could not recover what it cost to produce.

Sadhan Bikash Chakma, a farmer in Longadu upazila, said: "I sold my big two-acre mango orchard for just one lakh taka. Because there is no price in the market, the trader still has not picked the mangoes from the trees. Prices may rise a little at the end of the season, and then they will start harvesting. Many more farmers have taken up mango growing, but if they do not get a price, the farmers will have to count losses."

Faruk Hossain, son of Abdur Rahim, a former member of the district council, whose family owns the largest mango orchard in Longadu, said they grew Amrapali, Mallika, Khirsapat and Rangui on about 50 acres of hill land. "This 15-year-old orchard used to earn us Tk 10 to 12 lakh every year. This year the price has fallen and it has come down to seven lakh," he said. "Given what we have spent on the orchard, at the end of the day we have not been able to make much profit."

Longadu, where both growers farm, is one of Rangamati's ten upazilas. Banglapedia, the national encyclopedia of the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, describes it as 388.49 square kilometres in area, with Kaptai Lake covering about a third of the upazila and the Maini as its main river. It lists mango, jackfruit, litchi, banana, coconut, pineapple and papaya as the upazila's main fruits, agriculture as the main source of income for 69 per cent of households (2011 census data), and 12 hats and bazars, the best known being Bara Mayanimukh Bazar, Karallachhari Bazar, Boiragi Bazar, Kattali Hat and Bhaibon Chhara Hat. The same entry records 52 kilometres of waterway alongside 25 kilometres of pucca road, 52 kilometres of semi-pucca road and 196 kilometres of mud road.

Md Moniruzzaman, deputy director of the DAE's Rangamati district office, told Jagonews24 that carrying mangoes out of remote orchards beside Kaptai Lake was very costly. His explanation goes to the geography of the district.

Kaptai Lake is the largest man-made freshwater body in Bangladesh. According to Banglapedia, it was created by damming the Karnafuli river near Kaptai town, primarily to generate hydroelectric power, and lies wholly within Rangamati district, spreading across the upazilas of Rangamati Sadar, Kaptai, Naniarchar, Langadu (Longadu), Baghaichhari, Barkal, Juraichhari and Belaichhari. The H-shaped lake has a surface area of 58,300 hectares. Its Kasalong arm is fed by the Mayni and Kasalong rivers, and its Rangamati-Kaptai arm by the Chengi and the Rinkhyong.

The lake drowned most of the middle Karnafuli valley, and Banglapedia notes that it also created a long and varied waterway: places that once took a day or more to reach became an hour's trip by speedboat or launch. Because the water level is held at different heights in different months, the lakeshore lands are fertile, and about 6,075 hectares of them are farmed on lease through agreements with the local government.

Banglapedia gives Rangamati district an area of 6,116.11 square kilometres, ten upazilas (Kawkhali, Kaptai, Juraichhari, Naniarchar, Barkal, Baghaichhari, Belaichhari, Rangamati Sadar, Rajasthali and Langadu), and a population of 595,979 at the 2011 census. Its rivers are the Karnafuli, Kassalong, Chengi and Myani, and agriculture is the main source of income for 59.08 per cent of its people. Chakma, Marma, Tanchangya, Tripura and many other ethnic communities live there.

The DAE deputy director also pointed to quality. He said fruit bagging, in which each young mango is enclosed in a bag on the tree, keeps the fruit free of insects and fungus, but at Tk 3 to Tk 3.50 per bag, small growers short of money could not use it fully. As a result, he said, even though production was high, growers could not achieve good quality, and prices were comparatively low.

The threats the bags guard against are well documented. Banglapedia notes that about three dozen insect pests attack the mango from nursery to maturity, among them the mango hoppers, the mango fruit weevils, the stem and shoot borers and the mango fruit fly (Dacus dorsalis), and that the main fungal diseases are anthracnose, sooty mould, leaf blight, die-back and powdery mildew.

Bangladeshi research has measured what bagging does. In a trial with Amrapali reported in the Journal of the Bangladesh Agricultural University in March 2020, Md Jobayer Hossain and colleagues compared brown paper, white paper, white polythene and black polythene bags with unbagged fruit. Bagging significantly affected the fruit's weight, size, skin colour, vitamin C, sugars, total soluble solids and shelf life. Brown-paper-bagged fruit kept longest, 15 days, against 8 days for unbagged fruit, and the authors found brown and white paper bags superior in skin colour, vitamin C and shelf life.

A second study, by Md Atiqur Rahman and colleagues including BARI horticulturist Md Sorof Uddin, published in the International Journal of Postharvest Technology and Innovation (vol. 6, no. 2, 2019), tested bagging of the commercial variety Khirsapat together with improved post-harvest handling (an improved harvester, a desapping tray and hot-water treatment). Compared with unbagged fruit handled the traditional way, the incidence of stem-end rot and anthracnose fell by 86.7 per cent and post-harvest losses along the value chain by 70 per cent; the treated fruit kept an attractive skin colour and stayed marketable for ten days at retail, without any change in sensory quality.

Which bag to use, when to put it on and when to take it off depend on the variety and the orchard, and growers who want to try the method are best advised by their upazila agriculture officer.

The mangoes on Rangamati's stalls in June 2026 came from very different places, and published sources record their backgrounds.

• Rangui: the hill variety the Jagonews24 report describes as coming from Myanmar, and the most widely planted mango among Hill Tracts growers in the 2019 survey. It grows well in hill soil, but it was the cheapest at Samata Ghat in June 2026, at Tk 400 a maund.
• Amrapali: a hybrid of Dasheri and Neelum bred by Dr Pijush Kanti Majumdar at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in Delhi and introduced in 1971. Its tree is dwarf and bears regularly, with clusters of small fruit and deep orange-red flesh rich in beta-carotene, but a shorter shelf life than many varieties. Its cultivation in the hills began in 1998-99, as noted above.
• BARI Aam-4: a hybrid bred by BARI from M3896, a colourful variety from Florida in the United States, and the local Ashwina, released in 2003. The Daily Star reported in August 2021 that it was grown on 4,000 to 5,000 hectares, made up about 1 per cent of national output and was in demand as a late variety, usually available from the last week of July through August.
• Banana mango: a variety imported from Thailand; in 2021 The Daily Star reported that only a few farmers grew it, with an output of about 5 tonnes. By June 2026, as Doyalal Chakma's remark shows, it had spread widely in the hills.
• Katimon: a Thai variety that, The Daily Star reported in September 2022, local entrepreneurs had brought to Bangladesh about six years earlier. The same report said its trees stay under six feet, that the DAE recorded it on 700 hectares nationwide in 2021-22, and that a DAE deputy director in Rajshahi warned that the extra management costs of year-round production could make it commercially unviable. A 2023 BSS report carried by The Business Standard said the trees flower and fruit three to four times a year.
• Haribhanga: a variety from Rangpur in the north whose mother tree stands in Tekani village of Mithapukur upazila, where farmer Nofol Uddin Paikar planted it in 1949, according to The Daily Star (June 2025). The name means "pot-breaking", after the water-filled clay pots he hung on the tree that village boys kept breaking. Its flesh is fibreless and firm, and it keeps well. On 12 February 2024 it was one of four products recognised as geographical indications, bringing Bangladesh's total to 28, BSS reported.
• Khirsapat and Mallika: grown in the largest Longadu orchard; Banglapedia lists Khirsapat among Bangladesh's elite grafted varieties.

Mango (Mangifera indica) is native to the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent, including Bangladesh, Assam and Myanmar, according to Banglapedia, which counts about 100 cultivars in Bangladesh. The tree flowers from January to March, and fog, rain or cloudy weather in that period harms fruit set. The superior varieties have long been grown mostly in Rajshahi, Chapainawabganj and Dinajpur in the north-west.

Nationally, the DAE put the 2021 crop at about 25 lakh tonnes from 2 lakh hectares, against 24.68 lakh tonnes from 1.9 lakh hectares the season before, The Daily Star reported in August 2021. By then BARI had developed 17 mango varieties and Bangladesh Agricultural University 25.

The 2026 season began weeks before the Rangamati report. In Rajshahi, harvesting started in orchards on 15 May 2026, the first day of the Bengali month of Jyoishtho; Papia Rahman Mouri, additional deputy director of the DAE in Rajshahi, told bdnews24.com that the district had 19,062 hectares of mango orchards and a production target of 243,995 tonnes, worth an estimated Tk 780 crore 68 lakh.

In Rangamati, the concerns raised in June 2026, the cost of moving fruit across the lake, the price of bags and the lack of storage, echo the call BARI's Dr Zulfikar Ali Firoz made in 2021 for processing factories and cold storage in the hills.

Photo: MohammedSuman22 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Sources: Jagonews24, Daily Ittefaq, The Daily Star, bdnews24.com, BSS, The Business Standard, Banglapedia (Asiatic Society of Bangladesh), Journal of the Bangladesh Agricultural University, International Journal of Postharvest Technology and Innovation, International Journal of Sustainable Agricultural Research, Wikipedia