AGARTALA: Tripura Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Minister Ratan Lal Nath has flagged off a consignment of 600 kg of queen pineapple for Oman at the Agartala Railway Station.
The consignment will first reach Guwahati and subsequently be flown to Oman.
Speaking after the flagging-off ceremony on Thursday, Nath said, "We are sending 600 kgs of Queen Pineapple through Guwahati Express. It will ultimately reach Oman through a flight from Assam. Apart from that, we have orders for sending 5 MT of Queen Variety pineapple to Dubai. The government is in talks with buyers to send a bigger shipment of 30 MT Kew variety pineapples to Holland."
Elaborating further on the growing demand for Tripura-grown agricultural products in the national and international markets, Nath said, "I have been in Germany for a visit. After consultation with the sellers over there, we have received orders for Black rice, bird's eye chilli, Kali khasa, and Black sesame in substantial quantities."
According to the Minister, the buyers'-sellers' meeting being organized in different parts of the country elicited a massive response. "We are going to Indore on June 20 to organise a buyer-seller meet. Earlier we had organised similar events at Varanasi, Delhi and Agartala. Earlier, the price of pineapple used to be around Rs 15 to 16 per piece which has now shot up to Rs 32 per piece deducting the transportation cost.
Not only pineapple, products like jackfruit, ginger, wood apple, and betel leaf are also being sent to foreign countries. In fact, before 2018, the government never put such efforts into promoting the agricultural goods of the state. When we saw pineapple as a profit-making crop, we introduced the staggering technique for yearlong production," he added. (ANI)
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