In Nabinagar upazila, a bumper output of IRRI-Boro rice has delighted the farmers. Local farmers said bumper crop has been achieved due to favorable weather conditions during the current IRRI-Boro season. Already, 53% of Nabinagar Upazila's paddy been harvested through combine harvesters. If the weather is good, the farmers expect to harvest almost 100% of the paddy in the next week.
Even if the wages of the workers are high, the farmers are able to cut at cheap prices. The cost of paddy harvesting per bigha is Tk 5,000-6,000, while the cost of harvesting with combine harvesters is Tk 2,200-2,500.
According to the Agriculture Office, the average yield of rice in the current season is 6.5 tons per hectare. Accordingly, this year Nabinagar upazila is expected to produce about 117.26 tons of paddy, the market value of which is about Tk 3,30 crore.
Nabinagar Upazila Agriculture Officer Jahangir Alam Liton said - "In the current IRRI-Boro season, 21 unions and 1 municipality of the upazila have planted Boro on a total of 18,040 hectares of land, of which 8,500 hectares are in Haor and 9,540 hectares in plains. Syngenta provides hybrid incentives on about 5,000 bighas of land in the upazila. As a result, the disease attack was once less.
In case of BRRI-28 rice disease infection in some lands of Haor, the Agriculture Department immediately took necessary measures at the
farmer level.
In the current Boro season, farmers are getting good yield by cultivating BRRI-88, BRRI -89, BRRI -92, BRRI -96, Bangabandhu paddy-100 as new varieties in Nabinagar. Which are yielding 4/5 maund per bigha more than BRRI -28 and BRRI -29. In Nabinagar, more than 100 agricultural machinery is provided to the farmers at 70% government subsidy price for paddy cutting and threshing. As a result, Haor paddy harvesting at the right time is directly contributing to reducing the labor crisis.
He also said that if the same type of rice is cultivated repeatedly in the same land, the disease resistance of rice decreases. Therefore, the land should be cultivated in different varieties of paddy.