Elahi said over the past few years, the districts of Chuadanga and Meherpur, and Dhunat and Sherpur thanas in Bogra, Biral and Ghoraghat in Dinajpur and Hatibandha and Patgram thanas in Lalmonirhat witnessed proliferation of maize cultivation. One salient feature of its many advantages is that maize could be grown both in Rabi (November 1 to mid-December) and Kharif (Mid-February to end-March) seasons, he added.

"Production of maize has shown good results in the last two years. Maize has also gained popularity as a food side by side with the poultry feed. Public sector procurement of maize has been introduced like rice and wheat in order to encourage farmers in maize cultivation. The efforts for increasing area and production of maize will be strengthened," said National Agriculture Policy (NAP) of 1999.

According to the sources of Integrated Maize Development Project (IMDP), the annual requirement of maize in the country is as high as one million metric tons of which 900,000

tons of maize is used by the poultry farms of the country.

Sources said, both public and private sectors as well as some NGOs have came up in big ways for promotion of maize cultivation in Bangladesh. For example, they said, BRAC, Syngenta, Grameen Krishi Foundation and the state-run BADC were now in maize seed business.

So far, the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI) has developed as many as 12 maize seed varieties, four of which are hybrid varieties. These are: Barnali, Shuvra, Khoi Bhutta (popcorn), Mohor, BARI Maize-5, BARI Maize-6, BARI Maize-7, BARI Mishti Bhutta-1 (sweet corn), BARI Hybrid Maize-1, BARI Hybrid Maize-2, BARI Hybrid Maize-3, and BARI Topcross Hybrid Maize-1.

Dr Md Safiul Alam Bhuiyan, Chief Scientific Officer at the Plant Breeding Division of BARI, told The Daily Star that taking seed resources from BARI, a private company called North Bangladesh Seed Company has been helping out maize growers in Bogra with quality maize seeds.

Other than BARI-released seeds, sources said, there are other high-quality imported maize hybrids now available in Bangladesh which include, Australian varieties, namely, Pacific-11, Pacific-60, Pacific-983 and Pacific-988.

Craig A Meisner, the CIMMYT Agronomist, mentioned that CIMMYT has introduced "Whole Family Training Programme (WFTP)" on maize cultivation in the country. The salient feature of this training is to involve the adult male and female members of a family.

"Future for maize is quite good in Bangladesh, " asserted Meisner informing that local entrepreneurs have even started showing interests in setting up commercial ventures for producing tortillas (corn bread). "We'll bring in three tortilla machines from Mexico soon," Meisner added.

Mentionably, maize is used mainly as poultry feed in Bangladesh though in many countries of the world including sub-Saharan Africa and South America, maize is consumed as a staple food.