Haripada Kapali, a farmer who discovered a high yielding rice variety outside of a formal research station and shot to fame, died yesterday at his village home in Jhenidah's Ahsannagar at the age of 96.

Family members said the agrarian farmer who was suffering from old-age complications breathed his last around 1:15am.

The rice he developed, taking the breeding line from a highly productive rice variety of Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI), got popularised among farmers in Jhenidah and was named after him - Haridhan.

He left behind his wife Sumita Rani and his adopted son Rupkumar and a host of admirers and well wishers to mourn his death. He was cremated at Aliarpur in Chuadanga yesterday afternoon.

Local agriculture officials, farmers, and people in the community mourned the death of Haripada Kapali.

Talking to The Daily Star yesterday, BRRI Director General Dr Bhagya Rani Banik paid tributes to Haripada, and said he had perseverance and was very hard-working. She lauded Haripada's zeal in making something good out of a popular BRRI variety.

In 1994, while weeding out a plot of BR-11, a popular rice variety of BRRI, Haripada came across a bunch of paddy which was different from the other paddy plants. That bunch was healthier, taller, and looked more promising to him.

Developed and released by BRRI back in 1980, BR-11, also known as Mukta by then, had turned out to be the country's best bred Aman rice variety.

He took special care of the newly-found bunch and facilitated its growth in a natural way. At first he thought this would not yield good crops. But finally, this separate paddy gave better production than the already planted ones. Haripada collected this paddy separately and stored it in a safe place. Next year he made separate seeds, prepared seedbeds and sowed the 2/3 grammes of seeds in another plot. He compared that with BR-11 and found better vigour in the segregated ones.

When Haripada got a better yield from the new variety, his peers from neighbouring farm plots rushed to him and showed interest in cultivating Haridhan.

Haripada Kapali comes from a poor family of Enayetpur village in Jhenidah

Haripada Kapali sadar upazila. He was the only son of Ishwar Kundu. His father died when Hari was eight. He immediately started cultivating the ancestral land to support his family.

When he was seventeen or eighteen years old, he married Sunita Rani, daughter of Raban Biswas of the same upazila, and relocated himself to his father-in-law's house in Ashannagar. He turned over a new leaf here. He involved himself whole-heartedly in farming on lands, some of which he inherited from his father-in-law and some of which he bought.