“Orange Festival” from today in Chitwan

CHITWAN (MUGLING), JANUARY 1: The “Orange Festival” is being organised at Ichchhakamana rural municipality of Chitwan from today. The three-day festival aims to ensure a market for oranges produced in Tokdand, Dhap, Majhgaun, Sirangaun and Dode villages of the rural municipality.

A large quantity of this kind of citrus fruit is produced in these villages. Chairperson of Ichchhakamana rural municipality, Dan Bahadur Gurung, shared that the orange festival is going to be organised for the first time with on objective of facilitating the local orange farmers to sell their products and make good earnings. “We have made arrangement where festival visitors can pick and eat oranges by climbing trees”, he added. Similarly, an orange-eating contest would also be organised at the festival.

Chair Gurung said the oranges would be kept at a discounted price as well as different materials are planned to be distributed to orange farmers and training would also be imparted to farmers by agriculture technicians.

“We are organising the festival with a belief that it will be easy to sell oranges produced in Ichchhakamana rural municipality at different markets of the country as well as it will help for the publicity of tourism sites of the area”, he mentioned. It is estimated that more than 450 farmers of Ichchhamana rural municipality will sell oranges worth Rs 100 million this year. Farmers are now selling oranges at Rs 75-90 per kg from their farms.

The citrus fruit is cultivated on 80 hectares of land in the rural municipality this year, according to the Agriculture Development Section of the rural municipality. A total of 1650 metric tonnes of orange was produced in the rural municipality last year.