A truckload of Gobindabhog mangoes was seized in Satkhira as they were being sent to market after being ripened with chemicals. The mangoes were later destroyed.

Acting on a tip-off on Saturday (3 May), leaders and activists of the Anti-Discrimination Student Movement stopped the truck on the Satkhira bypass road and informed the administration. The truck was carrying 400 crates of Gobindabhog mangoes.

Satkhira Sadar upazila nirbahi officer (UNO) Shoaib Ahmad said a set date had been fixed for marketing Gobindabhog mangoes in Satkhira, but some unscrupulous traders were trying to market immature mangoes before then. With the students' help the mangoes were seized and destroyed.

Satkhira Sadar upazila agriculture officer Monir Hossain, Arafat Hossain, convener of the Anti-Discrimination Student Movement, and traders from Satkhira Boro Bazar were present.

However, a mango trader who did not want to be named said several young men, identifying themselves as coordinators, held their truck in the bypass area and demanded Tk 1 lakh. When the traders said they could not pay, the young men handed the mangoes over to the administration.

The trader said that under the schedule announced by the district administration, Gobindabhog mangoes can be marketed from 5 May, only two days away. "But the mangoes in our orchards are ripening and going to waste. That is why we picked them and were sending them to Dhaka."

Asked how so many mangoes had ripened at once, he said they had been ripened by spraying "ethopin". He claimed that a small amount of sprayed ethephon is not harmful to people.

Researchers differ over ripening fruit with ethephon. However, in a report published by the BBC, Nazma Shaheen, director of the Institute of Nutrition and Food Science at Dhaka University, said that in most countries fruit is ripened for market using specific chemicals by scientific methods. Ripening fruit with ethephon poses no health risk, she said. It is a kind of gas that affects the enzymes inside the fruit, making it ripen quickly.

The report also said that in developed countries fruit is now kept in ethephon chambers, and it usually ripens and becomes fit to eat on the way to market.

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