Golden fibre, twice a year

What once used to be the "golden fibre" of the land, has now turned out to be losing farming prospects as more jute farmers are gradually moving away from jute cultivation due to the limitation of single yearly cropping and the absence of fair price.

As a result, there is a growing lack of raw jute that has led to many jute mills closing down.

Hoping to help the industry bounce back, leading industrial group Akij and Dhaka University have taken a joint-initiative to make jute cultivation commercially successful. They have undertaken a research on changing the method of jute retting to make it suitable for cultivation twice a year and thus increase production.

On Wednesday, the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology of Dhaka University and Janata Jute Mills, a subsidiary of Akij Group, signed a memorandum of understanding for the research. Under the contract, initially signed for one year, Dhaka University will conduct research with the funding of Akij Group.

Dhaka University Vice Chancellor Md Akhtaruzzaman, said any new varieties resulting from the research will be made available to all.

Shedding light on the planned research Sheikh Bashir Uddin has been the managing director of Akij Group said that from initial research they have found that reducing the dependency on natural water and changing the jute-retting process will help improve the yield.

"We are working on innovating the technology so that the farmers can cultivate the crop all year round on any land with little water," he said.

At present, after cultivation, farmers need to keep the jute in deep water for several days and deep water is not available except during monsoon season. Besides, it is hard to get deep water wells even during monsoon season. As a result, the cost is more while the quality is low and it cannot be produced more than once a year.

Bashir Uddin said that these issues will be solved once the new technology is invented.

He said that besides inventing new technology they are also working on inventing a new method for fibre conditioning for making jute yarn.

"If we can do this then the production and quality of jute yarn will change radically," he added.

Professor Haseena Khan of the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology department of Dhaka University, said that the department has developed a new jute seed for research.

"The quality of jute fibre of the new seed is much better than existing jute fibres," she said.

She also added that Dhaka University is working on a variety of jute seeds which can be cultivated in coastal areas and on soils with high salinity.

Dhaka University VC Akhtaruzzaman said that jute is one of the major cash crops in Bangladesh.

"The potential of jute is also huge due to environmental reasons. It is possible to make it more commercially successful by inventing new varieties in research," he said.

Akhtaruzzaman said that in future Dhaka University will focus on industry demand based research through forging ties with business organisations.