Ahsan Habib is a former presidential award winner for cultivating watermelons and vegetables. He is now making a name in Barguna with his black plum trees. Ahsan Habib’s black plum trees bore no fruit in the first two years on being planted in 2008, but he doubled down on nurturing them and now great clusters of the fruit are the first things to greet the eye at his Koraitala village home.
The black plum
tree (Syzygium cumini) is also commonly known as Malabar plum, Java plum, jamun or jambolan. The fruit trees start flowering from March to April and the fruits develop by May or June.
During the harvest season, Habib collects the fruit from his 43 trees almost every day. At the season’s start, he was able to get Tk 215 per kg. As more fruits arrive in markets, prices go down. Packaging for transportation is still an issue, as the fruit becomes quite soft when ripe. But the grower and his family hope to adopt better methods in future. Seeing the success, many of the area’s farmers now seek Habib’s expertise in the cultivation.
[ Tk 100 = €1.00 ]
Source: thedailystar.net
Photo source: En.wikipedia.org