Rangpur's Haribhanga mangoes due in June, with over Tk 200 crore of trade expected

The Haribhanga mango, the fibreless variety that has become a symbol of Rangpur and whose reputation has spread abroad, was about a month and a half away from the market in early May 2026. Jago News reported from Rangpur on 4 May 2026 that people involved in the mango business saw the prospect of more than Tk 200 crore of trade around the fruit in the Rangpur region that season, provided the weather stayed favourable.

According to information from the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) in Rangpur, Haribhanga was grown on more than 2,000 hectares in the district that year. The rain of the preceding few weeks had helped the young fruit grow larger and juicier. Hailstorms and gusty winds had caused slight damage in some areas, but overall the yield was expected to be better than in the previous year.

The mango cultivation target for Rangpur district that year was about 3,500 hectares, of which Haribhanga accounted for more than 2,000 hectares, the report said. Haribhanga yields about 10 to 12 tonnes a hectare, and Jago News put the value of the crop at more than Tk 200 crore. The trade figure was an expectation voiced before the harvest, not a count of sales.

Agriculture officials and growers told Jago News that mature Haribhanga mangoes normally reach the market from the middle of June. Haribhanga found on the market before then is immature: according to the agriculture department and the growers, a section of dishonest traders breaks the rules and sells unripe fruit in the hope of a slightly higher price. The agriculture office said the trees had begun to blossom from early December that season, that the fruit is picked around mid-June, and that the department hoped picking would start on time.

In earlier seasons the start of picking had been set locally. Prothom Alo reported in June 2025 that every year the district administration announced the date on which Haribhanga could come to market after consulting growers and traders, and the Mithapukur upazila agriculture officer, Muhammad Saiful Abedin, told the paper that in previous years dates between 15 and 20 June had been given. In 2022 the local administration set 20 June as the start of harvesting, The Daily Star reported. In 2023 intense heat ripened the fruit early and, at growers' demand, picking began ten days ahead of the fixed date, with the fruit on sale from 10 June, according to Prothom Alo. In 2024 a joint meeting of orchard owners and the district administration again set 20 June as the date for marketing, the DAE's then deputy director in Rangpur, Riaz Uddin, told the Dhaka Tribune. In 2025 no date had been announced by 13 June, and the district and upazila agriculture offices advised orchard owners and traders to market mature fruit only after 15 June.

Timing matters because the Haribhanga does not keep. Two sub-assistant agriculture officers in Mithapukur told Prothom Alo in 2025 that the fruit ripens within four or five days of being picked, which is why a large quantity spoils every season. The same report quoted the sub-assistant agriculture officer of Khoragachh union, Mamunur Rashid, as saying that growers are asked not to use any pesticide for at least 20 to 24 days before picking, and that the agriculture office trains farmers in good agricultural practice for safe mangoes, though competition among growers had kept pesticide use high.

Agriculture specialists told Jago News that the Haribhanga tree gives a low yield one year and a good yield the next. The low year is called the off year and the good year, in agronomists' language, the on year. The 2026 season was an on year: the trees were carrying plenty of fruit, far more than in the previous year. Sirajul Islam, additional director of the DAE in Rangpur, told the paper: "This is the mango's on year. A lot of fruit has set. The agriculture department is supporting growers with advice."

This alternation is well known in mango science. A study of the alternate-bearing Indian cultivar Dashehari, published in Frontiers in Genetics in January 2023, describes mango as having a strong tendency towards alternate or biennial bearing: a heavy fruit load in one year reduces the formation of flower buds and leads to lower or no production the following year, giving the rhythm of heavy and poor bearing years. The authors call it a serious problem for growers that causes major economic losses, and note that the switch from vegetative growth to flowering in mango is still poorly understood.

Weather at flowering and fruit set decides much of the rest. Banglapedia's entry on the mango notes that fruit setting is harmed by fog, rain or cloudy weather in January to March when the trees flower, that mild showers while the fruit is developing and enlarging are beneficial, and that storms, particularly hailstorms, cause immature fruit to drop. Only about one or two flowers out of about a thousand may produce a mature fruit. The 2026 report fits that pattern: recent rain had helped the fruit swell, while hail and wind had knocked some off.

Rangpur growers had seen bad seasons before. In June 2022 The Daily Star reported that total output might fall by 20 to 30 per cent compared with the two previous seasons because of fluctuating temperatures at budding and untimely rain between March and April. In May 2024 Prothom Alo found young Haribhanga fruit dropping in Khoragachh during a long heatwave, with growers reporting rain at flowering time in the winter months, drought and insect attack; Rangpur's weather office said maximum temperatures had ranged from 34 to 38 degrees Celsius for a week.

DAE figures published in earlier years give the background to the 2026 estimate. In June 2022 the DAE in Rangpur said Haribhanga was grown on 1,887 hectares in the district, with an expected production of around 43,000 tonnes; about half of the total came from Mithapukur and Badarganj upazilas, and around 5,000 Haribhanga orchards had sprung up across the district. The then deputy director, Obaidur Rahman, said each hectare would produce around 18 tonnes that year, giving farmers and traders the scope to do Tk 200 crore of business, The Daily Star reported.

In June 2023 the DAE's deputy director in Rangpur, Obaidur Rahman Mondol, told Prothom Alo that there were more than 1.7 million Haribhanga trees in the area, that the variety covered 1,905 hectares that year against 1,887 hectares the year before, and that 12 to 15 tonnes a hectare could be expected. The DAE and growers then estimated that Haribhanga worth Tk 250 crore might be sold. They also gave the paper the costs: Tk 28,000 to 30,000 a hectare to grow the fruit and Tk 20,000 to 25,000 a hectare to lease the land, about Tk 50,000 in all, against a yield of 300 to 325 maunds a hectare and prices of Tk 1,500 to 2,200 a maund at the time.

For 2024 the DAE's district figures put mango of all varieties on 3,335 hectares, with Haribhanga on 1,905 hectares and a production target of 26,000 tonnes, Prothom Alo reported in May 2024; a month later the Dhaka Tribune quoted the DAE as saying Haribhanga covered 1,935 hectares, 30 more than the year before, and that about 32,000 tonnes could be produced, while farmers hoped to sell Tk 250 crore worth. In May 2025 the DAE's deputy director in Rangpur, Md Sirajul Islam, told the national news agency BSS (as published by The Business Standard) that in the previous season farmers had produced 38,508 tonnes from 2,556 hectares in all five districts of the region, 29,772 tonnes of it from 1,910 hectares in Rangpur district alone; farmers and traders then expected Tk 180 crore to Tk 200 crore of trade in Rangpur. For the 2024-25 year Prothom Alo cited the DAE as recording 1,915 hectares of Haribhanga in the district, 1,268 of them in Mithapukur, with a possible output of 29,851 tonnes, and growers, traders and officials estimated about Tk 150 crore of trade at an average of Tk 50 a kilogram.

Prices had swung with events. The Daily Star reported in 2022 that during the Covid-19 lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 growers could not transport the fruit and a kilogram sold for Tk 40 to 60 depending on quality. In June 2025 Haribhanga was selling at Padaganj for Tk 1,500 to 2,500 a maund depending on size and quality, according to Prothom Alo.

The main market for Rangpur's Haribhanga is the Padaganj hat in Khoragachh union of Mithapukur upazila, a wholesale market. Nazmul Islam, a young entrepreneur and mango grower from Padaganj, told Jago News that he had planted mangoes on more than 12 acres. Hail and storms a few days earlier had caused some damage to his orchard, and more storms would mean losses, he said, but if the weather stayed favourable to the end, the harvest should be good. Local wholesaler Abdul Malek said many large buyers from Dhaka, Chattogram, Sylhet and elsewhere in the country had already started getting in touch. "We hope both the price and the demand for mangoes will be satisfactory this time," he said.

Earlier reports describe how the hat works. Traders from different parts of the country arrive at Padaganj five to seven days before the season starts and rent rooms there, Prothom Alo reported in 2025, and five or six courier companies deliver mangoes from Padaganj to consumers across the country during the season; an employee of one of them told the paper that his company alone had carried Haribhanga worth Tk 60 lakh from Padaganj the previous season. Local traders and orchard owners said marketing problems were worst at Padaganj itself: water stands in the hat after a little rain, there is no shed, and the road for trucks and pickups is narrow and potholed.

Much of the crop is sold before it is picked. Prothom Alo met a 65-year-old grower in Khoragachh who had leased a two-acre orchard for one season for Tk 4 lakh, and The Daily Star in 2022 met a farmer leasing an orchard of 54 trees for Tk 4.2 lakh a year. Some farmers told the Dhaka Tribune in 2024 that because orchards are sold in advance, middlemen keep them from getting a fair price. The season also creates other work: The Daily Star noted that demand for bamboo baskets used to pack and transport the mangoes rises many times over, and Prothom Alo described young people in Lalpur, Padaganj, Teyani and neighbouring villages buying from growers and sending fruit across the country.

The change matters in a region once known for hunger. The Daily Star explained in 2022 that monga, a Bengali term for a yearly cycle of poverty and hunger in the north that struck from March to April and from September to November, had long affected Rangpur, and that Haribhanga had emerged as the district's most effective cash crop. The DAE told Prothom Alo in 2023 that the mango had changed the economic landscape of the Rangpur region.

Principal Fakhrul Anam Benju, president of the Rangpur district unit of Shushashoner Jonno Nagorik (SHUJAN, Citizens for Good Governance), a non-partisan civic platform founded in 2002, told Jago News that the Haribhanga was no longer confined within the country: it is exported to Malaysia, Singapore and other countries in South-east Asia. Within Bangladesh, he said, direct supply from orchards through Facebook and e-commerce platforms had multiplied in the past few years, and since its recognition as a geographical indication (GI) product the mango's brand value had grown, which helped secure good prices.

Benju added that despite the large trade potential, growers were somewhat worried about the lack of cold storage and modern preservation. Because the Haribhanga perishes quickly, special trains or fast vehicles should be arranged to carry it, he said.

The demand was not new. Prothom Alo reported in 2023 that despite the money the area earned each season, not a single cold store for mango processing had been built, marketing was weak and roads were poor, according to a pioneer grower. In 2025 local people told the paper that the demand for a specialised cold store was a long-standing one; on 21 June 2024 the then agriculture minister, Abdus Shahid, had opened a GI Haribhanga mango fair at Padaganj and announced a specialised cold store, but in June 2025 the Mithapukur upazila administration and agriculture office could not report any government move to set one up. In 2024 the Dhaka Tribune reported that Rangpur farmers had already received advance orders worth Tk 30 crore from Malaysia, Nepal and the Middle East, and that the deputy commissioner had promised arrangements for wholesalers to buy directly from orchards, bank booths for payments and stepped-up law enforcement surveillance once the fruit reached the market.

Bangladesh's mango exports as a whole are small. According to the DAE figures reported by The Business Standard in April 2025, exports rose from 309 tonnes in FY2016-17 to 1,757 tonnes in FY2021-22 and 3,100 tonnes in FY2022-23, then fell to 1,321 tonnes in FY2023-24. In September 2025 the trade publication FreshPlaza reported that 2,194 tonnes had been shipped in 2025 to 26 countries, led by the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia and Italy, and that Amrapali made up about 80 per cent of shipments. On 21 May 2025 the agriculture secretary announced that the first mango exports to China would start on 28 May that year.

The Haribhanga began in Tekani village in Khoragachh, Mithapukur. Amjad Hossain Paikar, son of Nafal Uddin Paikar, a villager known as a lover of trees, told Prothom Alo in 2023 that it was probably 1949 when his father brought a mango seedling from the then jungle-covered Ucha Balua village in Mithapukur and grafted it. The variety was then called Maldia. An earthen pot (hari) was tied to the tree as a filter to water it, and one night someone broke the pot. The tree later bore a heavy crop of very sweet fruit, and when people at the market asked about it, Nafal Uddin told them it came from the tree whose pot had been broken: the 'hari-bhanga' tree. The name stuck, and the mother tree was still standing in his yard in 2025.

People rushed to take grafts from the mother tree, so many after Nafal Uddin's death that its branches began to droop, and in the 1980s people began building orchards commercially from grafts, Prothom Alo reported. Two Mithapukur men, Lutfar Rahman and Abdus Salam Sarkar, started commercial cultivation in 1990; Abdus Salam told BSS in 2025 that he had 25 orchards on 15 acres. Md Abu Sayem, deputy director of the DAE's Burirhat Horticulture Centre in Rangpur, said in 2025 that commercial cultivation began in Mithapukur about three decades earlier and had spread to all eight upazilas of Rangpur and to Nilphamari, Dinajpur and other neighbouring districts.

The fruit's qualities explain its pull. According to Jago News and the earlier reports, the Haribhanga is fibreless, sweet and tasty, its stone is very small and its skin thin, and each fruit weighs 200 to 300 grams. Local growers told Prothom Alo that the red soil of the Mithapukur and Badarganj areas suits it, and farmers told the Dhaka Tribune that the variety is grown in other northern districts too but tastes better from Rangpur.

The Haribhanga mango was recognised as a geographical indication product of Rangpur on 12 February 2024. That day the journal approving four more products as Bangladesh's GI goods was published: Rangpur's Haribhanga mango, Moulvibazar's agar, Moulvibazar's agar attar and Muktagachha's monda, bringing the number of approved GI products to 28, Jugantor reported.

Registration is handled by the Department of Patents, Designs and Trademarks (DPDT) under the Ministry of Industries, which began work in 2003. The Geographical Indication of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act was passed in 2013, and the rules under it were made in 2015. Jamdani sari became the country's first GI product in 2016. Several mango varieties were already on the list before the Haribhanga: Chapainawabganj's Khirsapat, the Fazli of Rajshahi and Chapainawabganj, and Chapainawabganj's Langra and Ashwina.

The DAE's Sirajul Islam told BSS in May 2025 that GI recognition had created a huge demand for the Haribhanga at home and abroad, and the Dhaka Tribune reported in June 2024 that farmers in Padaganj and Khoragachh were very happy with the recognition.

Mithapukur, the heart of Haribhanga country, is an upazila of 515.62 square kilometres in Rangpur district, bounded by Rangpur Sadar and Pirgachha to the north, Pirganj and Sadullapur to the south, Pirgachha and Sundarganj to the east, and Badarganj and Nawabganj (Dinajpur) to the west. Its thana was formed in 1885 and became an upazila on 1 February 1984. The 2011 census counted 508,133 people, and agriculture was the main source of income for 69.47 per cent of households, according to Banglapedia, which lists mango first among the upazila's main fruits, followed by jackfruit, blackberry, papaya and banana.

Rangpur district covers 2,400.56 square kilometres and was formed on 1 February 1984. Within it, Prothom Alo listed in 2025 the main Haribhanga areas as the Khoragachh, Moyenpur, Changmari and Balua Masumpur unions of Mithapukur and the Kutubpur, Gopalpur, Lohanipara, Ramnathpur and Kalupara unions of Badarganj. The Business Standard reported in 2025 that commercial cultivation was expanding across all eight upazilas of Rangpur and into villages of Dinajpur, Nilphamari, Thakurgaon, Panchagarh, Gaibandha, Kurigram and Lalmonirhat.

The mango (Mangifera indica) is considered indigenous to the eastern Indian subcontinent, including Bangladesh, and the country has nearly 100 cultivars, Banglapedia notes. Superior varieties are propagated by grafting to keep the character of the mother tree; a grafted tree first bears fruit in its fourth year and stays productive to about its 45th year. Some of the best orchards are on deep alluvial soils, and the optimum soil pH is 5.5 to 7.5. About three dozen insect pests attack mango in Bangladesh, among them mango hoppers, fruit weevils, stem and shoot borers and the fruit fly, along with fungal diseases such as anthracnose and powdery mildew.

According to the DAE figures reported by The Business Standard in April 2025, Bangladesh produced 2,350,499 tonnes of mango from 202,968 hectares in FY2020-21, 2,707,459 tonnes in FY2022-23 and 2,508,973 tonnes from 205,034 hectares in FY2023-24, and the 2025 target was a record 2.7 million tonnes. The DAE's list of the better varieties grown in the country includes the Haribhanga alongside Fazlee, Langra, Himsagar, Khirsapat, Amrapali and others. Officials said mangoes were produced mostly in 15 districts, including Rajshahi, Naogaon, Satkhira and Chapainawabganj, and that the 2025 harvest would open with the Gopalbhog of Satkhira from 5 May. The Haribhanga, by contrast, is harvested late in the season over about two months, The Daily Star noted in 2022.

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

Sources: Jagonews24, Prothom Alo, The Business Standard (Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha), Dhaka Tribune, The Daily Star, Jugantor, FreshPlaza, Banglapedia, Frontiers in Genetics, Wikipedia