DHAKA, April 5, 2022 (BSS) - The hard days of Rahela, 47, ended. She is now self-reliant. But her affluency didn't come in a day. For this, she had to go through hard works that eventually brought her success. She has been able to become successful entrepreneur by cultivating lemon.

Rahela became helpless when her husband, the only earning person of her family, met a fatal road accident and was paralyzed in 2014. She saw darkness in her eyes after her husband accident. She sold their some property for bearing the expenses of her husband's treatment. Her days were running in such a way.
 
But in a few days, she came into sense and thought to do something to run her six-member family.

 One day, a field officer of a local NGO visited her house. Rahela told her about the situation. The officer suggested her to do something like lemon farming in high land areas as many got success in lemon farming in Monohardi, Belabo, Shibpur and Raipura upazilas of the Narsingdi district in the last ten years.
 
After taking some training from the NGO, Rahela started lemon farming in Belabo upazila. In the beginning, she took lease some land for two years from a local farmer. She started lemon farming at a limited scale on experimental basis.
 
The Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) took a programme to encourage farmers to cultivate export quality lemon in four upazilas in 2012. The programme was taken after seeing the interest of the farmers and finding climate and soil of the district suitable for Colombo lemon cultivation.
 
Under the programme, a total of 50 new orchards of Colombo lemon (each orchard stretches one bigha) were set up in the four upazilas of the district.
 
The DAE supplied 160 sapling of Colombo lemon to each grower of the orchards and imparted them training on producing quality lemon.
 
Besides, some farmers in different areas of the district raised a number of orchards by their own initiative and they are, at present, harvesting good quality lemon from their orchards.
 
According to DAE Narsingdi, farmers in four upazilas currently are cultivating Colombo lemon in 2200 orchards on 480 hectares of land. This year, they have so far produced over 5200 tonnes of lemon in the district.
 
Rahela also took training on farming Colombo lemon. Then she hasn't looked back anymore.

She said she succeeded in Colombo lemon cultivation and gradually raised a garden by planting 1000 saplings on 150 decimals of land. This year, she got an excellent output from his garden.
 
 She expressed satisfaction over Colombo lemon farming, saying she has earned Taka 300000 till now by selling the lemon this season.

Like her, many women of the upazila are cultivating Colombo lemon.
 
DAE deputy director Shovan Kumar Dhar said Colombo lemon has great demand in the local and neighborhood markets as it is being exported abroad specially European and Middle East countries.
 
Dhar said April, May and June are the best time for harvesting Colombo lemon, expressing that, this year Narsingdi district will export over 2000 metric tons of Calombo lemon abroad.