Brown planthopper is attacking this season's aman paddy in Mirsarai, Chattogram, and farmers accuse sub-assistant agriculture officers of not visiting the fields, a charge the officials deny.
BRRI scientists have developed a low-cost seed sowing machine that fills a seedling tray in one second, letting one worker sow 14,400 trays a day for rice transplanters.
Young agricultural entrepreneur Hasibul Hasan Ronty has had a bumper yield of black rice on about two bigha in Faridpur, and the DAE plans to keep his crop as seed for other farmers.
Early varieties of aman paddy have started reaching markets in Dinajpur, and farmers are happy with both the yield and the prices.
Harvesting of early aman varieties has begun in Gaibandha, and farmers are pleased with the yield but worried that higher production costs will leave them without a fair price.
Government food grain stocks are higher than at the same time in the past two years, yet rice prices are at their peak.
Mymensingh division has a large annual surplus of rice and other paddy-based food but a big shortfall of wheat and maize, which a regional official says farmers will be encouraged to grow.
Grown on about 400 bighas in the Rajshahi region, the aromatic, short-duration BRRI dhan75 yielded over 5 tonnes a hectare and frees land for mustard.
Farmers in Puthia upazila of Rajshahi say planthopper and neck blast have struck their aman paddy, while the local agriculture officer says there has been no planthopper attack.
A farmer in Nandigram upazila of Bogura has drawn crowds by growing black rice for the first time in the area.
The government will buy eight lakh tonnes of paddy and rice from the domestic market this aman season, paying Tk 42 a kg for rice and Tk 28 for paddy.
The Bangladesh Rice Research Institute has told farmers how to protect aman paddy after a cyclone or storm rain.
Cyclone Sitrang damaged aman and vegetable crops across 19 districts, though the DAE says the losses were smaller than feared.
