Dimer Char lies at the edge of the Sundarbans where the forest meets the sea. Home to tigers, deer, lesser adjutant storks, jungle fowl and red crabs, the char also has a rice-like plant growing wild that tolerates very high salinity. Birds eat its grain, ripe grains fall and sprout, and it now covers about four kilometres of the char.
Chandan, the forest officer at Kochikhali station, said the plant is known locally as dhanshi and is food for birds. The char has three tigers and countless deer and is known as a kingdom of birds. In his view the plant has all the traits of rice and deserves study.
Sea-going fishers say they have seen it for many years. When green its grains fill with milk like cultivated rice, and ripe grains give a rice-like kernel when pressed, but they do not know whether it is fit to eat. The ears are long and slender, the grains elongated, some husks light brown.
Motahar Hossain, deputy director of the Department of Agricultural Extension in Bagerhat, said the plant tolerates extreme salinity but yields very little. The rice research station has been told. Work is starting on whether it is fit for human food, what nutrients it has and whether a new salt-tolerant variety could be bred from it.
Rifat Jahan Usha, an assistant professor at Khulna Agricultural University, said it belongs to the grass family, none of whose members harm animals, though its nutrition and taste could be tested. The report also notes that it may be smooth cordgrass, Spartina alterniflora, a perennial wild grass that grows thickly on salty coastal mud and looks like a rice field but is not a food grain. Only study will settle what it is.
Dimer Char is part of the Sundarbans, so cutting plants there is against the law. Those involved say a plant that thrives in such salty water at the river mouth should be researched, and its suitability for saline coastal land tested.
The report is by Bangla Tribune's Khulna correspondent.
Photo: Moinul / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0); the Kochikhali range of the Sundarbans
Source: Bangla Tribune
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