Summer tomato opens new scope for farmers

The summer variety BINA Tomato-2 grown on a filed on the BINA campus in Mymensingh in the current season. PHOTO: STAR

This year, BINA released three summer varietiesBahar, BINA Tomato-2 and BINA Tomato-3--for cultivation. Two others-- BINA Tomato-4 and BINA Tomato-5 are ready for release, BINA sources said.

Cultivation of the crop this year at farmlands near BINA yielded between 1800 and 2000 kilograms of tomato from 10 decimal area. Farmers sold those at between Tk 40 and Tk 50 per kg, said BINA Principal Scientific Officer (PSO) Dr Shamshad Begum. She developed the varieties.

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BINA started experiments on summer variety tomato in 1997.

A farmer can raise three crops from February to September, BINA sources said. But it needs some extra care. The crop has to be grown under polythene sheds to protect it from excessive rain, they said. This does not cost much.

The summer variety tomato is yet to be popular due to lack of publicity, said Dr AFM Feroj Hasan, Senior Scientific Officer (Training, Communication and Publication) of BINA. "We trained about 500 farmers from different corners of the country on tomato cultivation in last couple of years. More farmers should be trained and there should be more demonstration plots", he said.

Dr Shamshad Begum said the BINA summer variety tomato is large in size, fleshy and more tasty than those imported from India. It is more nutritious as it contains more vitamin-C than the winter varieties. It is more suitable for small and marginal farmers as it needs only 70 to 80 days from sowing to harvesting, she said.

Farmer Moksed Ali, said he cultivated BINA Tomato-2 on about 15 decimal land. The yield was not like that in BINA demonstration plots but it was highly profitable. Ali said he sold over 2000 kilograms in local markets and earned about Tk 50,000.

"It was beyond my imagination how one crop on 15 decimal land can earn such a big amount", he said while talking to this correspondent recently.

Ali said he will cultivate summer variety tomato in large scale next year. It will be a good business, he noted.