PABNA. Apr 3 : The ongoing spell of drought and foggy weather poses a threat to mango production in all the nine thanas of the district.

Pabna sadar. Ishurdi. Su-Janagar. Chatmohar and Bhan-goora thana are mango producing areas in the district. Farmers hope if it rains soon, the output of mango will be satisfactory.

Huge mango sprouts have appeared in the trees this year, but those are being dried up due to continuous drought which has been sweeping all over the district. If such drought continues further for a few days, there will be severe damages to the mango sprouts. Consequently, the production of mango would suffer enormously, farmers apprehend.

Mango production in the entire northern region suffered a lot due to severe and prolonged cold wave and heavy fog during the last two consecutive years.

— BSS from ChapainawabganJ reports: Production of mango here and its adjoining areas is likely to fall by 10 to 15 per cent due to loss of 25' per cent mango

trees in the last year's devastating floods and late budding caused by foggy weather.

Sources of the Mango Research Centre in Chapainawab-ganj said, last year the production of mango was not satisfactory. but this year it is an on-season for mango. Moreover, there were several cold waves at the time of the budding of the mango trees. The foggy weather triggered pest attacks on the buds and due to untimely rainfall most of the buds withered. The untimely budding may affect the harvesting, the sources said.

Mango trees need a constant temperature of 20 to 25 degree Celsius for budding, but the temperature remained far below during the end of winter in this region. Sources said, due to untimely rains there was vegetative growth of the trees resulting in the sprouting of new leaves hampering the reproductive growth.

In ChapainawabganJ there are mango groves covering 28 thousand acres with about one million of mango trees. About 35,000 people of the area are directly related with mango

trading.

BSS from Thakurgaon says: Almost all the mango trees in the mango orchards here were : full of sprouts in the sprouting season of the year which has just ended.

Although dry weather, scorching neat of the sun and westernly wind hampered the process of fruit formation, yet the mango growers are hopeful of getting a good quantity of mango from their orchards and trees.

According to District Agriculture Extension Directorate, there are 204 mango orchards in the district with thousands of threes. Out of the total orchards, 62 are located in Ranisankail, 38 in Haripur, 45 in Baliadangi. 33 in Pirganj and 26 in Thakurgaon sadar thana.

Besides the orchards, there are thousands of mango trees on road sides, in the yards of houses and on vacant lands.

The district is famous for mango production. There are many old orchards in the district which were established by rajas, maharajas and zamln-dars of the district in the past.

In these orchards good quality mangoes are produced. Of whiem. Surjapuri. Fazil. Gopalbhog. Misribhog. Brind-aboni. Lengra. Himsagar. Khir-sapati. Asarina and Bandigari are famous for taste and flavour.

Surjapuri is a good variety of mango which is produced in the district, specially in Baliadangi thana areas. It is not produced in other parts of Bangladesh, except in Thakurgaon and some areas of Panchagarh and Dina-Jpur districts.

Surjapuri. produced in Baliadangi thana of Thakurgaon district, possesses special taste and flavour.

Another variety of mango called Bandigari is also good and is produced only in Bandi-gar amacent to Thakurgaon sadar thana.

The mango growers have urged the government to take necessary initiative to boost mango production and set up fruit processing industries in the district by exporting processed mango and other fruit, considerable amount of foreign currency can be earned.