Shawdesh Desk:

Bangladesh has marked the highest rate of increase in fruit production among the world’s fruit producing countries, bringing a revolution in the country.

The country is the 10th largest tropical fruit producer across the world, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations.

Fruit production in Bangladesh has been growing at a rate of 12.5 percent for the last 20 years, according to the FAO.

Over the years, more and more fruit trees are being planted along roads, fallow land and in yards while commercial cultivation has increased over the last 10 years.

The government introduced support of Year-Round Fruit Production for Nutrition Improvement project in 2014 to increase supply of fruit round the year to close nutrition gap.

Consumers are now getting different kind of fruits at fruit shops as farmers are producing local and foreign varieties of fruits across the country.

Project director of Year-Round Fruit Production for Nutrition Improvement under Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE) Mehedi Masood told the Daily Sun that different government initiatives to produce fruits round the year have increased fruit production in the country in the last 10 years.

Different indigenous fruits along with different foreign fruits are also being produced in the country, he said, adding that import of fruit has also declined due to huge fruit production in the country.

A total of 70 different types of fruits are being produced in the country with mango remaining at the top of fruit production followed by banana. A total of 56 varieties of fruits were cultivated in Bangladesh about a decade ago, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

In 2006-07, 4.74 lakh hectares of land was under fruit cultivation while the production was 8.79 million metric tons, according to DAE.

The acreage has since jumped to 7.27 lakh hectares, with a production of 12.15 million tonnes in 2018-19. Fruit production went up by 3.366 million tonnes in these 12 years, according to DAE statistics.

Bangladesh has also been among the top 10 largest countries to yield a number of fruits — second in jackfruits, 7th in mango production and eighth in guava production.

Mango and guava production has doubled, papaya production increased by 2.5 times and litchi production increased by 50 percent in the last 10 years, according to Agriculture Information Service (AIS) of DAE.

Mango production was 1.97 million tonnes in FY 2014-15, 2.02 million tonnes in FY 2015-16, 2.14 million tonnes in FY 2016-17, 2.37 million tonnes in FY 2017-18, 2.2 million tonnes in FY 2018-19 and 2.4 million tonnes in FY 2019-20.

Banana production was 1.6 million metric tons in FY 2014-15 while it was 2.1 million metric tons in FY 2018-19.

Jackfruit production was 1.6 million metric tons in FY 2014-15 while it was 1.8 million metric tons in FY 2018-19.

Litchi production was 0.21 million metric tons in FY 2014-15 while it was 0.23 million metric tons in FY 2018-19.

Papaya production was 0.49 million metric tons in FY 2014-15 while it was 0.88 million metric tons in FY 2018-19.

Guava production was 0.32 million metric tons in FY 2014-15 while it was 0.52 million metric tons in FY 2018-19.

Bangladesh has topped other countries to increase its fruit cultivation land by 10 percent per year despite its limited geographical area.

The other growing fruits are java plum (jaam), litchi, jujube, lemon, pineapple, watermelon, lotkon (Burmese grape), star fruit (kamranga), papaya, wood apple, custard apple, sapodilla (safeda) and melon.