Kul farming expands in Jashore's Sharsha as Beltala Bazar trade grows

Commercial kul (Indian jujube) farming was expanding in Sharsha upazila of Jashore district in January 2026, and Beltala Bazar in the upazila had become a busy winter market for the fruit. In a report published on 7 January 2026, Jagonews24's Sharsha correspondent described the market as full of fresh kul and brisk trading from foggy morning to evening, and called it one of the important fruit markets of the southern region. The Sharsha upazila agriculture officer, Dipak Kumar Saha, said kul had been grown on about 138 hectares in the upazila that season.

According to local sources quoted in the report, kul farming had once been limited in Sharsha's fields but had become one of the main drivers of the area's farm economy. Commercial kul orchards had grown up over wide areas of Sharsha and of neighbouring Kalaroa upazila in Satkhira district, and because the crop paid well, new farmers were taking it up every year. That growth, the report said, was being felt at Beltala Bazar.

Beltala Bazar's kul trade, as the January 2026 report described it, ran without a break every day from 12 noon to 7pm. Several varieties reached the market each day: Ball Sundari, Thai, China, apple and sour (tok) kul. Prices differed from one variety to another, but traders said every kind was selling quickly. Because demand for kul was strong in the big cities, traders said, fruit was sent from Beltala every day to Dhaka and to other divisional cities.

Commission agents (aratdars) at the market, Salauddin Mukul, Minarul, Kamal and Abdur Razzak, said both demand and sales had risen compared with the year before. They said kul was sold at Beltala at a fair price and by correct weight, and that with prices good, both farmers and traders were satisfied.

Buyers came from outside the upazila. Mujahid, a fruit trader from Jhenaidah, told the reporter he had been in the fruit business for about 17 years and came to Beltala Bazar every winter. Yields were lower in some areas that year, he said, but demand was high, so prices were good, and even after buying at relatively high prices a trader could make a good profit selling in other markets.

Kamruzzaman Munna, general secretary of the Beltala Bazar fruit traders' association, said the market had great potential built around kul, and that farmers and traders needed the administration's cooperation to do business without disruption. With kul farming growing as it was, he said, Beltala Bazar could in future become known in the southern region as a kul market, in the way the area is known for its mango markets.

Aksed Ali, a kul farmer in the area, said he had grown kul on two bighas of land that season. The yield was a little lower than the previous year, he said, but prices in the market were good. In his view the great advantage of Beltala Bazar was that correct weight was ensured there, with no cheating, so farmers received a fair profit.

The upazila agriculture officer, Dipak Kumar Saha, gave the area under kul in Sharsha that season as about 138 hectares. The varieties grown most, he said, were Ball Sundari, Thai, apple, China, narkeli (coconut-shaped) and sour kul. Good yields and good market prices had brought farmers a profit, he said, and if the trend continued kul farming would expand further the following season.

The officer also described Beltala Bazar in winter as more than a fruit market: a picture of Sharsha upazila's economic potential, where the trade built around kul was bringing new hope to the rural economy and where kul from the fields was helping meet demand across the country.

The accounts agree on one contrast. Several speakers said the yield was somewhat lower than in the previous season, at least in some areas, while all of them said demand and prices were higher. The report did not give a price per kilogram at Beltala.

Sharsha is one of the eight upazilas of Jashore district in Khulna division. According to Banglapedia, the national encyclopedia of Bangladesh, it covers 336.28 square kilometres and lies on the border with India: the Indian state of West Bengal bounds it on the west and on part of the north, Chaugachha upazila on the north, Jhikargachha upazila on the east and Kalaroa upazila of Satkhira on the south. Its main river is the Betna, and it has several notable beels (wetlands), among them Zila Beel, Sonanadia Beel and Barakona Beel.

The 2011 population census counted 341,328 people in Sharsha. Sharsha thana was formed in 1910 and became an upazila on 3 July 1983. It has 11 unions, one of which is Benapole, on the border with India. Banglapedia, citing the census, gives agriculture as the main source of income for 66.32 per cent of households, with commerce second at 12.40 per cent.

Banglapedia lists paddy, jute, potato, wheat, mustard, lentil (musur), sesame and vegetables as Sharsha's main crops, and mango, jackfruit, plum, coconut, hog plum and date as its main fruits; "plum" is the word Banglapedia and the Bureau of Statistics use for boroi or kul. The upazila's main exports are date molasses, sesame and vegetables, and it has 30 hats and bazars and two fairs.

Kalaroa, the neighbouring upazila named in the report, lies directly south of Sharsha in Satkhira district. Banglapedia gives its area as 231.42 square kilometres and its population as 237,992 in 2011, with agriculture the main source of income for 68.89 per cent of households. Like Sharsha it borders West Bengal on the west.

Jashore district as a whole covers 2,606.94 square kilometres, according to Banglapedia, and is bounded by Jhenaidah and Magura on the north, Satkhira and Khulna on the south, Narail and Khulna on the east and West Bengal on the west. Its main rivers are the Bhairab, the Chitra, the Betna, the Kobadak and the Mukteshwari, and the 2011 census counted 2,764,547 people in its eight upazilas.

The growth the January 2026 report described had been under way for years. On 2 March 2017 The Daily Star reported that the cultivation of jujube, known locally as kul or boroi, was on the rise in Sharsha, adjacent to the Indian border, because it had given dependable profits that compared well with other crops. At that time, the paper said, the upazila agriculture office counted around 500 farmers in the area growing apple and narkel varieties, and the upazila agriculture officer of the day put the area under different types of jujube at around 120 hectares.

The 2017 report noted that the first harvest could come as soon as four months after an orchard was set up, which drew small farmers looking for quick returns. One orchardist in Sharsha told the paper he grew three varieties, bau, apple and narkel, on eight bighas, had been growing jujube for ten years, and that it cost around Tk 30,000 a bigha to grow; the market price was then about Tk 50 a kilogram. Another grower from Gatipara village said he had sold more than Tk 35,000 worth of fruit so far that season against a production cost of Tk 15,000.

The same report recorded a problem: a considerable amount of fruit was lost by falling from the tree early, and farmers said they lacked good advice on preventing it and hoped the government would offer more technical support. After meeting local demand, it said, truckloads of jujube were going from Sharsha to Satkhira, Barishal and especially the wholesale markets of Dhaka.

Set against that 2017 account, the 2026 figure of about 138 hectares from the upazila agriculture office, and the daily shipments from Beltala to Dhaka and other divisional cities, show a trade that had kept its direction for close to a decade.

The Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) publishes area and production figures for jujube, which it lists as "Jujube (Boroi/Kul)", in its Yearbook of Agricultural Statistics. The 2024 edition, published in June 2025 and the latest available when the Sharsha report appeared, gives figures for the three years 2021-22 to 2023-24. BBS measures the area under orchards in acres and production in metric tons, and counts fruit from garden orchards and from trees outside gardens separately.

For the whole country, the yearbook gives total kul production of 94,877.40 tonnes in 2021-22, 96,844.29 tonnes in 2022-23 and 100,818.76 tonnes in 2023-24. In 2023-24 the area under kul gardens was 21,120.49 acres; production inside gardens was 31,723.34 tonnes and production from trees outside gardens 69,095.42 tonnes, which shows how much of the country's kul still came from homestead and roadside trees.

For Jashore district, the yearbook gives total production of 2,979 tonnes in 2021-22, 3,295.68 tonnes in 2022-23 and 3,322.00 tonnes in 2023-24, when the district's area under kul gardens was 246.23 acres. Neighbouring Satkhira, where Kalaroa lies, had 614.10 acres of gardens and total production of 2,248.05 tonnes in 2023-24. Khulna division as a whole produced 18,890.40 tonnes that year.

The largest district figures in the table belonged elsewhere: Rajshahi recorded 8,759.23 tonnes in 2023-24 and Mymensingh 7,229.00 tonnes. The upazila office's 138 hectares for Sharsha is a figure for the 2025-26 season, given in a different unit and for a different year, so it cannot be compared directly with the BBS table.

Kul belongs to the genus Ziziphus, which Banglapedia says has about 40 species; two are cultivated, Ziziphus mauritiana, the Indian jujube, and Ziziphus jujuba, the Chinese jujube. The kul of Bangladesh's orchards is the Indian jujube. In her reference work Fruits of Warm Climates (1987), the botanist Julia Morton describes it as native from Yunnan in southern China to Afghanistan, Malaysia and Queensland in Australia, and grown mostly in India.

Morton describes the plant as a shrub or a tree of 10 to 30 feet with drooping branches, which may be thornless or spiny. Cultivated fruit can reach about 2.5 inches in length; its skin turns from light green to yellow and then partly or wholly orange-red or red-brown, and slightly underripe fruit is crisp, juicy and subacid to sweet, with one hard stone. The tree needs full sun to fruit well, does best in a sandy loam that is neutral to slightly alkaline, and tolerates moderately saline soils, waterlogging and drought.

Banglapedia lists the popular varieties in Bangladesh as BAU kul 1 and 2, BARI kul 1 and 2, narkeli, sabzi and apple kul. Narkeli kul has elongated, spindle-shaped fruit with a small seed and sweet flesh, and Banglapedia names Satkhira, Rajshahi and the surrounding areas as its main production areas. Apple kul has attractive, apple-like fruit that is crisp and sweet, grows quickly and drops less fruit.

BAU Kul 1 was developed at the Germplasm Centre of Bangladesh Agricultural University (BAU) in Mymensingh. The Daily Star reported on 25 February 2008 that the work began at the centre in 1999, that a new variety was developed after research from 1999 to 2003 followed by adaptation trials in different districts, and that the National Seed Board registered it as FTIP BAU Kul-1 in 2005. Banglapedia describes its fruit as weighing 90 to 250 grams, with the seed only 3 to 4 per cent of the edible portion, on spineless, quick-growing plants that begin fruiting within four to five months of planting, and says it is grown across the country, including saline areas such as Bagerhat and Satkhira.

Ball Sundari, Thai and China, the other names heard at Beltala, are the names farmers, traders and the upazila office used for kul grown in the area; the references consulted do not describe them as registered varieties.

Banglapedia's account of kul cultivation in Bangladesh describes a hardy plant that grows in a wide range of conditions and tolerates drought, though dry, hot weather suits it best. Kul can be planted throughout the year, but March to May is the best time, in deep loamy or fertile soil. Improved varieties are multiplied by budding and grafting, and cleft grafting had become the most popular method. Drainage is needed in the rainy season and light irrigation in drought.

Pruning matters because kul bears fruit on newly emerged branches. Banglapedia advises removing offshoots that arise below the graft union and, after the harvest ends, generally at the end of March, cutting back all branches to a height of three to five feet. Morton describes the same practice in India: pruning right after harvest at the start of dormancy, removing 25 to 50 per cent of the previous year's growth.

The main pests and diseases are well known. Morton names fruit flies (Carpomyia vesuviana and C. incompleta) as the principal pests, preferring the largest and sweetest fruit, and powdery mildew (Oidium sp.) as a disease that causes leaf loss and fruit drop; she also lists leaf-eating caterpillars, a gall-forming mite, sooty mould, leaf spot and fruit-rotting fungi. Banglapedia adds fruit borers and advises that no wild jujube plants be allowed near a kul garden, to keep diseases such as powdery mildew and pests such as fruit fly away. Growers who need to use any pesticide or fungicide should ask the upazila agriculture officer which product and dose to use.

These points connect with what Sharsha's farmers reported. The early fruit drop that growers complained of in 2017 is one of the effects Morton attributes to powdery mildew, and pests and disease are among the causes of lower yields; the January 2026 report, however, did not say why the yield was lower that season.

Kul is eaten fresh and processed. Banglapedia gives its composition as 85.9 per cent water, 0.8 per cent protein, 0.1 per cent fat and 12.8 per cent carbohydrate, and says 100 grams of the edible portion contain 55 kilocalories, 70 IU of carotene and 50 to 150 milligrams of vitamin C. Morton's table for fresh Indian jujube gives 65.8 to 76.0 milligrams of ascorbic acid (vitamin C) per 100 grams, along with calcium, phosphorus and iron.

Both references list a wide range of uses. Banglapedia mentions jam, jelly, chutney, pickles and juice; Morton notes that ripe fruit is mostly eaten raw or stewed and is also dried or powdered, while slightly underripe fruit is candied and acidic types are pickled. The fruit ships and markets well, Morton notes, which helps explain how kul picked in Sharsha can be sold within days in Dhaka. Banglapedia also records that lac is produced on jujube trees by the lac insect.

Reports from other districts in the first week of January 2026 described a similar season. On 4 January 2026 the state news agency BSS reported from Dashmina upazila in Patuakhali that farmers there were growing Ball Sundari, apple and Kashmiri kul in mixed fruit gardens. Citing the upazila agriculture office, BSS said kul was selling at retail for 70 to 150 taka a kilogram and at wholesale for 60 to 125 taka, with Ball Sundari and apple kul fetching relatively higher prices and some sour types 45 to 90 taka.

A Dashmina farmer told BSS that wholesale buyers were coming from Jashore, Khulna, Barishal and other districts to buy kul directly from the market, and a local trader said demand in Dhaka and other big cities had grown compared with earlier years. The Beltala report three days later described the same pattern from the selling side: farmers in Sharsha and Kalaroa supplying a market whose traders shipped kul to Dhaka and the divisional cities every day.

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

Sources: Jagonews24, Banglapedia (Jujube; Sharsha Upazila; Kalaroa Upazila; Jessore District), Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (Yearbook of Agricultural Statistics 2024), The Daily Star (2 March 2017; 25 February 2008), Julia F. Morton, Fruits of Warm Climates (1987, Purdue University NewCROP), BSS (4 January 2026)