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15% spice demand met thru imports
Says an official of Spice Research Centre
SUKANTA HALDER
Bangladesh has to rely on imports to meet about 15 per cent of the demand of the spice market, which highlighted the foreign currencies the country has to spend to bring in the items as well as the potential for local production.
The country produces 49.30 lakh tonnes of spices against an annual demand of 58.50 lakh tonnes, said Shailendra Nath Mozumder, principal scientific officer of state-run Spice Research Center in Bogura.
The remaining 9.20 tonnes of spices are imported, meaning a lot of foreign currencies have to be spent to meet the entire demand.
“This also shows the potential for increasing the production of spices locally,” Mozumder told The Daily Star yesterday.
He said about 50 types of spices are used in Bangladesh in food preparation. Of them, 30 are grown locally.
The principal scientific officer made a presentation on the spice sector during a workshop as part of the “Improved varieties of spices and technology expansion project” at the Department of Agricultural Extension in the capital yesterday.
He said it is possible to reduce the shortage of spices by widening the cultivation of 51 high-yield varieties and using 156 modern technologies developed by the Spice Research Centre and the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute.
Mozumder, also the director of the project, said the production of spice crops should be expanded along with cereal, vegetables and fruits in order to reduce import dependence.
During the workshop, Wahida Akter, secretary of the agriculture ministry, said through the implementation of the project, the production of spices in the area under the project would be raised by 5 per cent and the rate of import of spices would decrease.
“High-quality varieties of spices have been developed in the research institutes of Bangladesh. We will have to try to meet our demand by widening the production of the crops domestically.”
She said farmers would grow spice crops only if they benefit from it.
In Bangladesh, the acreage under spice cultivation rose 1.7 times between 2000 and 2021, according to the presentation of Mozumder. The yield surged 5.4 times and the production rocketed 9.1 times in the two decades.
It is possible to reduce the shortage of spices by widening cultivation of high-yield varieties and using 156 modern technologies developed by Spice Research Centre and the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute, says an official

8th Agrow Award finale in March
STAR BUSINESS DESK
Standard Chartered and Channel i will host the finale of the eighth edition of “Standard Chartered - Channel i Agrow Award” in coming March.
Launched in 2014, the award recognises and celebrates trailblazers shaping the nation’s agricultural sector.
The latest edition was launched in August 2022 and has drawn 493 pitches which have been evaluated by a research agency for a shortlist, said a press release.
The shortlisted entries were then appraised by a jury board comprising local and international specialists, academics and industry leaders.
Naser Ezaz Bijoy, chief executive officer of Standard Chartered Bangladesh, and Bitopi Das Chowdhury, head of corporate affairs, brand and marketing, were also present.
The board was chaired by Shykh Seraj, director and head of news of Channel i, while its members are Dr Atiur Rahman, former governor of Bangladesh Bank, Dr Lutful Hassan, vice-chancellor of Bangladesh Agricultural University, Dr Md Shahjahan Kabir, director general of Bangladesh Rice Research Institute, and Zakia Naznin, national gender and socio-economic analyst of the Food and Agriculture Organization Bangladesh.