The government has been working to cultivate crops twice or thrice a year in the country’s salinity-prone coastal and southwestern regions, Agriculture Minister Muhammad Abdur Razzaque said yesterday.
About 25 per cent of the country’s total landmass is coastal and only one crop — Aman paddy — can be cultivated in these areas throughout the year due to its high salinity.
“For the rest of the year after harvesting Aman paddy, all the fields are left idle. We have been working on how to cultivate crops twice or thrice a year in this unfavourable environment,” he added.
The agriculture minister made these comments while inspecting the early cultivation of beans, off-season watermelon and chilli on the embankments of shrimp farms in Khulna’s Dumuria upazila.
“In the meantime, our agricultural scientists have been able to develop salinity tolerant improved varieties of many crops including paddy, pulses, watermelon, potato, maize, barley, sunflower and vegetables,” Razzaque said.
So, work is underway to rapidly expand these varieties and production technologies among all farmers in the vast coastal areas.
“To this end, a roadmap is being prepared,” he added.
Razzaque went on to say that the government is planning to dig or re-excavate more than 600 canals in Khulna and Bagerhat to alleviate the scarcity of irrigation water.
According to the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), coastal areas take up 28.30 lakh hectares of land in the country, of which 21. 62 lakh hectares are cultivable.
However, 10. 56 lakh hectares are salinity-prone and over 5 lakh hectares remain uncultivated during the dry season every year due to the adverse effects of saline water.
As per the survey of the Institute of Soil Research and Development, out of the total 213,000 hectares of cultivable land in Khulna, the amount of saline land is 190,000 hectares, or 89 per cent of the total cultivable land.
