Bangladesh has set a target to increase five times the cotton production by 2030, introducing new varieties and expanding cultivation areas, since the country appeared as the second largest consumer of the industrial crop, reports BSS.
“Cotton could be a major cash crop as we need to spend US$3billion every year for its import to meet its expanding demand in the textile industry,” Cotton Development Board’s (CDB) additional director Dr Md Fakhre Alam Ibne Tabib told the media.
According to official statistics, the country currently produces less than 0.2 million cotton bales a year against the annual demand for 8.5 million bales.
Against the backdrop of high demands, Bangladeshi textile and spinning mills and other users import cotton from India, the United States, several African and Central Asian nations, Australia, Brazil and Pakistan.
Tabib said they set the target to enhance the domestic cotton production to 1 million bales using newly invented high yielding and hybrid varieties and using the vast low fertile barren lands in the country’s southeastern hill region alongside some plain districts.
Western Jhenaidah and Jashore are plain districts while parts of Bandarban and Rangamati are hill districts where the country currently witnesses cotton production.
The cotton board now runs 27 on-farm trials at 13 zones covering greater Jashore, greater Kushtia, Rajshahi, Bogura, Rangpur, Thakurgaon, Dhaka, Mymensigh and the three hill districts incorporating Khagrachari as part of their initiatives.
CDB officials said the trial of germplasm of 12 high yielding Turkish cotton varieties were now underway at research farms under a project called Enhancing Capability in Cotton Varieties Development.
“We are expanding (cotton) cultivation coverage on low-fertile regions of – Barind land (greater Rajshahi), drought-and saline-prone areas, shoals and hilly areas, keeping in mind the initiative does not affect the main crops,” Tabib said.
He said the CDB scientists last year developed a new cotton variety naming it “CDB Cotton 19” alongside inventing two cultivation methods under a series of research projects in five cotton research centres of the country.
“Our researches simultaneously improved the cotton qualities alongside the varieties,” Talib said.
Bd-pratidin English/Tanvir Raihan
