Strawberries are being cultivated in the sandy soil of an abandoned brickyard in Chandpur. Ozark Beauty variant strawberries have been grown extensively by making pockets on about 2% of the land experimentally.
These strawberries are grown in a completely organic way.
A local entrepreneur Helal Uddin started cultivating strawberries along with other delicious foreign juicy fruits in the abandoned brick field at Shahtali village of Shahmahmudpur union in Chandpur Sadar Upazila. The area is now known as Fruits Valley Agro.
He started cultivating different varieties of fruits experimentally in 2020. He is now a rising farmer and entrepreneur of the area.
Helal Uddin said, “I grew three American varieties of Strawberry in the Fruits Valley last year. But due to bad weather, it did not see the face of success.”
However, he claimed that this year a completely new variety of Strawberry, Ozark Beauty, has been widely grown. Each of his trees yielded at least one kg of strawberries. But these have not been marketed yet commercially.
Shawkat Ali Akhand, one of the visitors of the strawberry cultivation, said Helal Uddin has opened everyone’s eyes by cultivating various kinds of juicy foreign fruit including strawberries in a brickfield on the bank of Dakatiya river in Chandpur. There are many such places on the banks of the Padma and Meghna rivers in Chandpur.
“Now other people might be interested in such cultivation,” he added.
Chandpur Sadar Upazila Deputy Assistant Agriculture Officer Naresh Chandra Das said, “The fruits are nice to see as these strawberries are fragrant, tasty and juicy, large in size and tall.”
“Entrepreneur Helal Uddin has proved that strawberries are also cultivated in sandy land. We will now propose others to cultivate it all over the country. The profit of the farmers would be high due to its low cost of cultivation and better production,” he said.
