At the foot of the hills in Banshbaria, Sitakunda upazila of Chattogram, farmer Md Abu Jafar has scored a success growing BARI-12, a new brinjal variety. The brinjal looks much like a bottle gourd, and local people have been crowding in to see it, asking: is it a brinjal or a bottle gourd?

Abu Jafar says the brinjal is very tasty and sweet, but when he takes it to market, buyers are confused and ask what it actually is. A single BARI-12 brinjal weighs at least one to one and a half kilograms.

In the field, the plants are carrying 10 to 12 kg of brinjals and bending towards the ground under the weight, with fruit hanging from every branch from top to bottom. The plants have had to be tied on both sides with bamboo sticks.

Md Abu Jafar, son of the late Md Abdur Rahim of Boaliakul village in Banshbaria, said: "I collected the high-yielding BARI-12 brinjal from the upazila agriculture office and grew it. No one in the upazila had grown this brinjal before; I am the first."

"At the start of the month of Bhadra I planted about 12,000 brinjal plants on 85 decimals of land," he said. "I wanted to grow brinjal after watching YouTube. I wasn't sure whether it would grow in Sitakunda's soil, but my fears proved wrong and the yield is good. It will cost me about Tk 1 lakh, and I will be able to sell the brinjals for about Tk 8-10 lakh. The crop will be more than 12 tonnes."

Jafar added: "The upazila agriculture office and Md Abul Monsur, the sub-assistant agriculture officer in charge of the block, advised me in various ways on growing this new brinjal and kept regular track. But water is very scarce here, and without it I cannot irrigate the field on time."

Sitakunda upazila agriculture officer Md Habibullah said: "Farmers in the upazila have grown different brinjal varieties on 50 hectares. Among them, Abu Jafar of Banshbaria has grown the new high-yielding BARI-12 variety for the first time, on 85 decimals this season."

"Others will be inspired to grow the new variety like Abu Jafar, and with a good yield they will profit a lot," he said. "The taste of this brinjal is unmatched and it has very few seeds. It is delicious mashed as bharta, and fried or in other curries. Because it is a local variety, seed can be saved. It is suitable for growing in Sitakunda."

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