Squash farming becomes a new trend to the farmers in Bangladesh. For being profitable, Kishoreganj farmers started to cultivate this new kind of vegetable.
It is known that Squash is a foreign vegetable. It is known as Jukini in Europe and as Kocha in Saudi Arabia. It is a popular vegetable in many countries of the world. Being tasty and high yielding, this short-lived pumpkin tribe vegetable gradually becoming popular to the farmers. Two color of Squash are found in Bangladesh like green and yellow. Green squash is more popular than yellow.
Farmer Atabur Rahman of Angadi village under Pakundia upazila in Kishoreganj has cultivated ‘Squash’ on 15 Decimal of land. Because of being a new to the vegetable list, the profits becomes double than other crops. It’s cultivating cost also lower than others, he said.
Flowers begin to come in 30 days of sowing and crops can be collected between 45 days to 80 days. Each tree can grow about 10 to 15 squashes. Each vegetable is weighed about one to three kg. The retail price of the squashes is Tk 40 to Tk 50 per kg and wholesale for Tk 30-35 per kg. Mosaic virus and fruit fly attack are noticed as disease but taking proper maintenance and timely action, the crop can be easily harvested.
Farmer Atabur Rahman said, “Mohammad Hamimul Haq Sohag, Deputy Assistant Agriculture Officer of the upazila, informed him about to cultivate the new kind of vegetables and so I expressed his interest in cultivating Squash. According to his instruction, I started cultivating this vegetable on 15 decimal of soil and I am very happy to have so much yield in such a short time. Now the collection and sale of this crop is going on. I also planned to cultivate two bighas of land in the next season.”
In the meantime, many farmers have shown their interest in cultivating this vegetable. They also hope that Squash farming will be quite beneficial.
Hamimul Haq Sohag said that the Squash is a short-lived but high-yielding. It as a pumpkin clan vegetable. Mixed taste of cucumber and pumpkin is available in this vegetable. There is also the high demand for this vegetables in the local market along with restaurants. So farmers can be benefited cultivating these vegetables very easily.
