RAJSHAHI, – Agricultural scientists and researchers have urged the farmers both male and female and others concerned to process green mango for its value addition through the best uses of modern technologies.
They viewed every year huge green mango drops due to storm or other natural calamities before harvesting season start or during mango harvesting season. So, there are many scopes of processing and preserving the fallen mangoes
properly to protect the farmers from financial loss.
They made this observation while addressing the closing session meeting of a two-day farmers training titled “Green Mango Postharvest Handling and Processing” at Fruit Research Station (FRS) in Rajshahi city today.
Postharvest Technology Division (PTD) of Bangladesh Agriculture Research Institute (BARI) organized the training in association with its ‘Green Mango Processing and Preservation Programme’.
Chief Scientific Officer of PTD Dr Miar Uddin addressed the meeting as chief guest and focal person as well with FRS Principal Scientific Officer Dr Alim Uddin in the chair.
District Agricultural Marketing Officer Monwarul Islam, Monitoring Officer from Ministry of Agriculture Khorshed Alam and Programme Director Dr Golam Ferdous Chowdhury also spoke on the occasion.
The main objective of the programme is to multi use of green mango for developing different value added products side by side with increasing shelf life of green mango for longer consumption and generating income and employment opportunity in agro-processing industry for gathering knowledge on handling, processing and preservation technologies.
Dr Miar Uddin says proper handling, processing, packaging, transportation and storage can halt substantial amount of postharvest loss of mango every year.
There is enormous prospect of establishing home-based cottage industries based on the green mangoes that will assist to fulfill their family demand of different products from mango as a part of nutritional security.
He added that PTD has developed many technologies for processing green mangoes and expanding those to growers level through training and different other dissemination programmes.
In the two-day training, the participants were given practical ideas and knowledge on how to prepare processed products like mango juice, mango bar, pickles, dried mango products, dehydrated and canned mango products.
More than 30 persons comprising mango growers both male and female, traders, school teachers and government and non-government officials concerned joined the training.
Dr Miar Uddin urged the participants to best uses of their knowledge acquired from the training for their benefits so that their surrounding people get inspired to the income-generating venture.
