The topical rains are helping farmers cultivate transplanted aman, the Department of Agriculture Extension said.
The farmers are now fully engaged in growing transplanted aman, said DAE agriculturists.
Due to its low production, they said, the farmers usually show more interest in growing rain fed aman, needing little irrigation.
In terms of acreage aman is the country’s largest crop but production-wise it is the second largest crop, they said.
DAE field service wing officials told New Age on Monday, 883 milliliters of rainfall in 58 districts on August 10 and 607 milliliters of rains in 53 districts on August 11, were proving useful for the aman crop.
The light rains every two or three days would, they said, prove ‘very favourable for the crop.
But they also said that non stop rains leading to water logging could harm the crop.
By August 12, they said, the farmers transplanted aman saplings covering about 55 per cent of the target area.
The crop would be ready for harvest in December, they said.
The DAE officials said the government set the target of growing broadcast aman on 3.39 lakh hectares and transplanted aman on 52.20 lakh hectares in the current season.
According to Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, 128.97 lakh tonnes of aman rice was produced from 56.1 lakh hectares of land in 2012-13 crop season that ended on June 30.
When asked, Md. Shamsher Ali, former director for research at Bangladeshi Rice Research Institute, told New Age on Tuesday over phone that the aman’s output was less than boro mainly due to environmental factors.
Grown in the kharif season, the aman crop usually gets less sunlight than the boro crop, he said.
Besides, the aman crop faces floods and other natural calamities that hamper its production, he said.
He said agricultural scientists were trying to invent better aman varieties for higher output.
Meanwhile, the farmers have harvested about 17 per cent of aus rice, mostly in Rangpur, Jamalpur and Mymensingh districts, according to the DAE field service wing.
This year the government had set aus cultivation target at 11.19 lakh hectares, officials said.
Bangladesh produced 21.58 lakh tonnes of aus rice in 2012-2013 on 10.5 lakh hectares, BBS figures show.
