DHAKA, Nov 17, 2022 (BSS) – Bangladesh is almost set to exceed the production target of Aman, the country’s second major rice variety, this year with officials saying yield of the staple was likely to be nearly 20 percent higher than their expectation.

“We expect the aman production this year will be 15 to 20 perccent higher than the projected output,” a Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) spokesman toold BSS.

   Additional director for DAE’s field service wing Mohammad Abduhu said aman yield was now likely to be over 170 million tonnes against an estimated yield of 163 million tones.

   His comments came as the harvesting of this major crop is underway in over 59 lakh hectares of land across the country while the farmers were expected to complete the picking process in next 45 days.

   DAE officials suggested 18 percent of the grain by now was harvested while aman crop contributes 38 percent of the total rice output and second after boro.

   According to Abduhu and his colleagues in the DAE the late autumn downpour largely sparked by cyclonic winds largely contributed to the increased yield contrary to the fears that the storm could have affected the aman production.

   He said the per hectare production target was higher than past two years “but the eventual production now appears to have exceeded even the elevated target”.

   Former DAE director general Abdul Muyeed said they were anxious about the aman output due to a draught like situation in the past months which could have triggered a fungus infection particularly when the paddy remained at milking or flouring stage but the rains eventually prevented any such scenario.

   “It (cyclone SITRANG) rather appeared as a blessing,” he said.

   Official statistics shows the overall aman area coverage in this year was over 59.06 lakh hectares while it was not more than 57.20 lakh and 56.25 lakh hectares respectively in last two years.

   Bangladesh was in third place maintaining the continuity of rice production having an yield of 37.4 million tonnes in 2020 and 37.8 million tonnes in 2021, according to the FAO report.