Ambassador of the Netherlands in Bangladesh Irma van Dueren inaugurated a demonstration on farming initiative featuring three innovative chicken breeds of SASSO farm in Bangladesh on Tuesday.
“The Netherlands has a reputation of flourishing in the overall agricultural sector and we have been working with Bangladesh through different forms of partnerships over many decades now. I am glad to learn about the technicalities of the Nourish-SASSO trial farm and how the PoultryTechBangladesh consortium is working towards strengthening the overall nutrition sector through the poultry value chain in Bangladesh,” she said in her speech.
The three new breeds are SASSOLI red, SASSO blend fast, and SASSO blend faster.
Demand for coloured broilers is large in Bangladesh and the SASSO breeds are in great demand. These were innovated keeping in mind the country’s demand for chicken, reads a press release.
These chicks are grown swiftly compared to other colored breeds like Sonali and become suitable for consumption within 49 days. They are given improved feeds, and less antibiotics is used. These breeds are expected to be comparatively better in taste and nutrition than broiler breed. These were disclosed while inaugurating SASSO farm at Chunia village in Madhupur upazila of Tangail district.
Under the five-year project titled ‘PoultryTechBangladesh’ SASSO farm launched its journey. Nourish Poultry, a subsidiary of the Khaled Group of Companies, will run the farm. Nourish is a Bangladesh-based company active in poultry breeding and hatching, feed production, farming and (further) food processing.
The initiative is co-funded by the Government of the Netherlands. The public-private partnership PoultryTechBangladesh comprises leading complementary (non-competing) parties from various steps in the poultry value chain, which enables Bangladeshi companies to provide integrated solutions.
PoultryTechBangladesh has been developed and is coordinated by Larive International and LightCastle Partners and includes ten companies and knowledge institutes including Aeres Training Centre International, Aftab Bahumukhi Farms, Hato, Hendrix Genetics, Kazi Farms, Marel Poultry, Mavitec, Nutreco, Royal Pas Reform and Van Aarsen.
Already about 3000 new breed chicks have been produced at the farm. At the second stage, several thousands more will be produced as part of increasing its production.
According to information from Bangladesh Poultry Industries Central Council, 2021, about Tk 35,000 crore has been invested in Bangladesh’s poultry industry. There are about one lakh poultry farms in the country where about 25 lakh people are directly involved.
Haruni Osman, Senior Policy Advisor, Food and Nutrition Security at Embassy of the Netherlands in Bangladesh; Sara van Hoeve, First Secretary at Netherlands Embassy in Bangladesh; Matthias Brienen, Director of Larive International; Zahedul Amin, Director of LightCastle Partners; Amber van Spronsen, Emerging Market Advisor of Larive International; Dipa Sultana, Senior Business Consultant and Project Manager of LightCastle Partners; Shahadat Hossain, Country Manager of Hendrix Genetics; Nurul Basar Sarkar, Project Coordinator of Nourish, and others were also present.