Tk 25–26 lakh of bamboo sold, then a pest at the shoot tips forced a switch to lotkon

An agriculture report by Dinajpur TV features an agricultural entrepreneur in Ghatail, Tangail, who has now planted a lotkon orchard on seven and a half acres of ancestral land. Before lotkon, he had planted bamboo on the whole of the land. From that grove he sold about Tk 25 to 26 lakh worth of bamboo. But at one point an attack by a type of harmful insect appeared at the tips of the bamboo. It is difficult to spray pesticide that high, so on the advice of local agriculture officers he stopped growing bamboo and looked for an alternative fruit. After seeing lotkon orchards in Narsingdi and testing the soil in the area, he chose lotkon; he brought an improved variety from Sylhet, raised 500 seedlings from seed and planted 400. In this orchard, started about 13 years ago, no fruit came for the first five to seven years. His family members were also angry that instead of leasing the land for Tk 4.5 lakh a year, he kept fruitless trees on it. Now about Tk 30,000–40,000 worth of lotkon is being sold from the orchard a day; in the current season about Tk 2.5 lakh worth of fruit has been sold, and he hopes for a yield of more than 300 maunds. Although bamboo brought good income, the practical difficulty of controlling disease and pests forced him to change crops.